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Kisses from Heaven

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It is so good to be back, thank you so much for the prayers. For those who don’t know, our family has been away in South Africa on a Sabbatical for the month of July.

I didn’t know how much I needed the time off. Honestly, everyone around me, mostly my family could see that I was emotionally and spiritually spent. The last few years have been particularly challenging with a global pandemic and family health concerns.

This month 8 years ago I began pastoring here at Grace Point, and it has been the best and most challenging assignment of my life. I want to say that I am grateful. Grateful to you as a church for the gracious time off, grateful to Debbie and my kids for their love and support. And I am most grateful to the Lord for His faithfulness and His goodness.  

When we left on July 3, we decided to be on the lookout for what we began calling, “Kisses from Heaven”. Unforeseen gifts and blessings from the Lord.

It would take weeks to share all of them with you but one overarching kiss from heaven was the way God orchestrated the beauty of His creation to minister to us.

I love mountains and the ocean. I love speaking with the Lord while gazing upon the beauty of creation. I quickly realized that God was refreshing my soul through nature. I wasn’t simply looking at a vista, I was drinking in the beauty of creation into my very soul.

It was winter, and chilly, but when we decided to go up Table Mountain for instance, it was a perfect near windless day. When we visited Cape Point, it was a howling north easterly wind that whipped up the ocean. We were in awe of the power of creation as the mighty waves crashed on the rocks.

From long prayer walks on the beach, standing on mountain tops, gazing at the majestic milky way and the southern sky, seeing multiple rainbows after a storm, seeing the incredible beauty of the birds and the majestic big five animals, God was restoring and filling our souls. He was so good to us.

Over the last week, the Lord has highlighted a certain text and it is found in Lamentations 3:19-26

The context for this book is the judgment of God on Judah. In 587 BC, the Lord used the Babylonian empire to destroy and take into exile most of the nation of Judah. Most scholars agree that the book was written by Jeremiah and it is a sad outpouring of grief. But right in the middle of the book, it seems like Jeremiah has a change of heart, he sees God in the midst of the grief and he begins to pour out his worship and appreciation.

Amid anguish and suffering, Jeremiah declares one of the greatest confessions of faith in the Bible. In the midst of his sorrow, he remembers the mercy of God.

22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

In the world around us, there is much that can cause us to grieve and become anxious. If we look to our finances or personal security as a foundation for hope and peace, we will always be discouraged. But if we build on Christ, the faithful one, he will never fail us.

Lamentations is a call to repentance, as we see in verses 39 and 40,  

“Why should the living complain
    when punished for their sins?

Let us examine our ways and test them,
    and let us return to the Lord.

Under the New Covenant we have the incredible promise of 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

God is faithful to forgive.

He is faithful to carry our burdens (Hebrews 2:17).

He is faithful to deliver us from temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13).

God is Faithful to keep us in this life and for eternity.

Do you trust God to be faithful?

One of the things the Lord impressed on me during the last month, was that the path ahead for us individually, as a church, and as a nation, is treacherous. This is not a word we often hear today, and it is defined as, “hazardous because of presenting hidden or unpredictable dangers.” Sounds like the world we live in.

How are we to respond?

We can become discouraged, and retreat into escapism. Hiding from reality by numbing our senses with addictions, whether it is drugs, pornography, social media, accumulating things, entertainment, sport, or any number of other distractions. How do we face the treacherous future?

The answer is clearly given in Lamentations 3:24-26,

“24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
    to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.”

Notice the underlined words, “wait and seek”

Waiting and seeking is prayer, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2).

Truthfully it is difficult to wait on the Lord, our human nature craves activity, we want to fix things.

As you wait on the Lord, you will see the fulfilment of another prophet, Isaiah 40:31. During our time in South Africa, the Lord slowed me down, he taught me to wait on Him, and he renewed my strength.

What about you? Are you experiencing kisses from heaven?

Are you waiting on the Lord? Are you seeking Him? What do you need to bring to the Lord today, that only He can solve?

As a church, do we know what it means to wait on the Lord?

Are we a praying church? I would say we have begun to scratch the surface of all that God has for us in the place of prayer.

We still have so much more that God wants to show us and power that He would release as we wait on Him.

Are you prepared to seek Him? Are you prepared to wait on the Lord?

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Sermon, Sunday January 16 2022, What Are You Asking For?

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Matthew 7:1-11

As we stand on the cusp of a New Year, what are you asking God to give you?

Matthew 7 verses 7 to 11 are amongst the most comforting verses in all of Scripture. And what makes them even more encouraging is that the one who makes the promise is the Son of God who has been given all authority.

We all face uncertainty in the year ahead, but we can face it with certainty in the promise of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus does not promise to remove our hardships and difficulties, he said so in John 16:33. But he always promises to sustain us and provide for us through the challenges.

In the early years of our marriage, Debbie and I prayed fervently for God to give us children. He didn’t give us the answer in the way we wanted. But looking back now, we are so grateful that God has given us far more than we could ever imagine in our two children.

What are you asking God for today that might not be in His perfect plan for your life? Will you have the faith to trust Him with the better gift that He has in store for you?

When we read Matthew 5,6 and 7, we are confronted by the incredibly high standard for Christian living that Jesus presents. In fact, the standard that Jesus lifts up in the sermon on the Mount, is so high it is impossible to keep without the help and grace of God.

And this is exactly what Jesus offers beginning in verse 7. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Think about this promise from Jesus in the light of living the Christian life.

This passage offers us three conditions to receiving this promise from Jesus.

Firstly, we need to recognize our need.

The fact is that we are born in sin. We are all separated from a relationship with our Creator. We all have the same desperate need, the need to be in a right relationship with God.

The Good News is that we can be reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross. However, to be a Christian is not a onetime event causing us to be perfect for the rest of our lives. We all live imperfect lives, subject to failure.

We are saved when we make Jesus Lord of our lives, but the process of sanctification takes the rest of our lives as God, by His mercy, renews us into the image of His son.

The Greek verbs that Jesus used in Matthew 7:7 are in the present active tense. Jesus is saying, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. There is a daily persistence in prayer, asking the Lord to help us. In fact, the Greek verb conveys urgency. This is an urgent asking, seeking, and knocking, desperate for Jesus to help us.

It’s the New Year and always a time when people make resolutions and lifestyle commitments. Many believers make commitments to pray more, read their bibles more and share the Gospel more regularly. But as we all know all too well, many New Years resolutions fade and are soon forgotten. The reason is that we don’t keep on asking for God to help us, we aren’t persistent in our cry to God for His strength to help us grow in our Christian lives (see Philippians 3:13-14).

If we were honest, this is where we struggle the most. We don’t have the persistence and the endurance. We need help.

Secondly, we see in this passage is that God is our Father.

In verse 11 Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

We can get so familiar with our Christian terminology that we can easily miss how crucial this is for us. To say we believe that God is our Heavenly Father is one thing, but is it something we are conscious of on a daily/ hourly basis? Do we really get it?

What a privilege it is that we can come to the throne of God in prayer. We get invited to call on God as Father (see James 1:17).

But not everyone has the privilege to call God Father. The incredible privilege is only available to those who know Jesus Christ as Lord (see John 1:11-12).

Once we become His children, we receive all the benefits of being adopted sons and daughters. He watches over us and gives us good and perfect gifts. Your Heavenly Father is eager to bless you.

God will never give you anything that is evil, but just because God will never give us anything evil, it doesn’t mean that we will never experience anything unpleasant. There is still suffering and evil in the world.

Thirdly, God never makes a mistake.

Matthew 7:8 says, “…how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.”  How much More! This is the overarching theme of the Bible; God is generous towards His children and he blesses them beyond their expectations.

But what is the best gift God can give us?

Solomon was offered anything he wanted, and he chose wisdom. But there is still a better gift.  

Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount gives us the answer in Luke 11:13, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In giving us the Holy Spirit, God gives us His very presence and we receive spiritual gifts. We receive everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

The need for the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is an ongoing need. Daily we are invited to ask the Father to be filled with the Spirit as we see in Ephesians 5:18. Daily asking the Father for a renewing, a fresh filling, to live the Christian life to the glory of God.

What are you asking for?

Are you asking for a fresh touch from God today?

Are you desperate for more of His presence in your life? (See Matthew 6:33).