Ok - so this has nothing to do with the Bible

But here is a really neat little South African news service I've been following:

Go check it out - it's in my opinion uncluttered, concise, neat.

Grace - Drafts and Ideas to the sermon I preached on 12 July 2009

Grace – Googling God – 12 July 2009

GRACE – SEARCH RESULTS FOR SEARCH 11 JULY 2009

1. W. R. Grace - Home

Grace - A premier global specialty chemicals and materials company.

2. Divine grace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Christianity, grace is "unmerited favour" from the God (referred to in Christianity's holy book, the Bible, in the chapter of Ephesians 2:8-9). ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_grace - Cached - Similar

3. Video results for Grace

Grace Jones - Corporate Cannibal
6 min
vids.myspace.com

The Grace - Neverending White Lights
4 min 18 sec
www.youtube.com

4. The Grace In Rosebank | The Grace Hotel Johannesburg

With only 73 rooms, The Grace in Rosebank is a sophisticated boutique styled city hotel with the highest standards of personal service and luxury as well as ...
www.africansunhotels.com/Index.cfm?...hotels...Grace... - Cached - Similar

5. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Grace

Explains the concept of actual grace, which is defined in the article as "a supernatural help of God for salutary acts granted in consideration of the ...
www.newadvent.org/cathen/06689a.htm - Cached - Similar

6. African Pride Superior Deluxe Hotels, Lodges and Country Houses ...

The Mount Grace Country House & Spa, set in the magnificent Magaliesburg Mountains, surrounded by 10 acres of lush gardens, is a true haven of natural ...
www.africanpridehotels.com/mount-grace-country-house-and-spa.html - Cached - Similar

7. Cape Grace, Cape Town's Premier Luxury Accommodation

Proudly situated in the iconic centre of Cape Town's Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, our newly refashioned, award-winning hotel sets the standard for luxury ...
www.capegrace.com/ - Cached - Similar

8. James Grace South African Guitarist Biography

Wecome to the website of leading South African classical guitarist James Grace. Visit his concert diary for information about up and coming events, ...
www.jamesgrace.co.za/ - Cached - Similar

SOME THEOLOGIANS CLASSIFY IT AS:

Unmerited Favour (dictionary) & Supernatural power by which acts toward Godly goals are achieved.

Ti 2:11-13 (Key Scrip) – SLIDE

- Great Scripture, very encouraging, however, what do you understand from it?

- Misconception: Grace inspires me to be good. Why don’t I always feel inspired? True in part, but not the gist of the Scripture.

- Problem in us not changing in grace is not grace, but our understanding.

- The problem is GRACE vs MERCY OR ACCORDING TO THE CATHOLIC THEOLOGY: Actual grace (God’s gifts in actions and deeds) and Sanctifying/Habitual grace (God’s gift that justifies us, as if we never sinned, and by the habit of God’s gifts imparted, causes a state of holiness)

(will give some examples of how you can’t seem to change something, even though you know you’ve been forgiven).

2 Ki 6:15-24 (Case study in mercy) SLIDE

- Elisha acts mercifully – he SPARES them, he does not treat them to the full extent of justice. He shows great kindness and mercy to them.

- Aram’s soldiers are obviously very touched by this gesture of mercy, however – shortly after Aram attacks Israel again.

- - When we react out of gratitude for mercy ONLY, we get less and less grateful, the further we move from sin, or the less we are worldly, we perceive less reason to be grateful. Always most grateful right after confessing serious sin, or your baptism.

- NEW SLIDE - Lk 7:47 (reference scrip) – Jesus says that mercy inspires love from the recipient. None has been more merciful than God, in not dealing with us as our sins deserve.

- Mercy is not acting in accordance with the judgement one deserves, but delaying, or hodling back due punishment.Mercy is awesome, powerful and can bring about great feats of righteousness, however, mercy deals with what has been done. The death part of the cross. As humans, our emotions tend to wane, and that is the part of us that most readily reacts to mercy. What about when we don’t necessarily FEEL very grateful. (Can explain examples etc)

- THAT IS WHY A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF GRACE IS GOOD:

- KEEPING MERCY FRESH AND INSPIRATIONAL:

- It’s not a method – God has a choice to show mercy or not (Ro 9:16-18, Eph 2:8-9), by confessing we don’t force God to forgive us – he has a choice, and he chooses to, that makes it great! God does not owe anyone mercy, but extends it to you. We are LUCKY, he has every right to blight us, but he chooses not to. You don’t deserve this –

- BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DAYS WHEN OUR EMOTIONS JUST WON’T RESPOND, AND IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO WANT TO BE RIGHTEOUS?

NEW SLIDE _ 2 Co 8:1-8 Grace was the ability given by God to be generous. There was no talk of forgiveness, or mercy. Their generosity wasn’t so much inspired, but brought about with God’s power.

SLIDE Ref: 2 Pet 1:3 –

2 Peter 1:2-4 (New International Version)

²Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. ³His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Grace v2 - ability by God to live this life-

SLIDE 2 Co 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17 (New International Version)

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

SLIDE : MERCY IS THE DEATH PART OF THE CROSS, IT’s CONCERNED WITH WHAT WAS DONE. GRACE IS THE RESURRECTION PART OF THE PASSION – WITH WHAT WILL BE DONE.

So how do I access this power?

SLIDE Ro 8:8, Heb 11:6 –

⁸Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.

Hebrews 11:6 (New International Version)

⁶And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

The Holy Spirit is the only way to please God, and faith is the only way to please God. Faith is the key, ignition and petrol for the engine of the Holy Spirit to act. Power from God is only available through faith, which God then exercises in us through the Holy Spirit. If you don’t believe this, make it reality, make it a fact, REALISE it, you cannot change!

Example:

Temptation comes, I don’t feel particularly grateful right now, or inspired, or particularly spiritual, and it seems like the Scriptures I memorized on that temptation just doesn’t do much in terms of firing up my heart. WHAT NOW?

Like ALL things concerned with God, the cornerstone is faith. I believe that God is giving me the power to overcome and to be different (2 Pet 1:3), I believe he is giving me a way out (1 Co 10:13) and I know he has overcome all sin (SCRIP>>>>) and he is now in me through his Spirit (Ro 8:8, Col 2:10-12), all his power is now available to me and I WILL overcome. The Holy Spirit in us responds to this faith in POWER (2 Ti 1:7).

Now, you don’t need to go recite all these things in a temptation, but you need to meditate on it EVERY DAY!!!!! It needs to become part of your functionality as a person. So that a temptation comes, you can simply say – I don’t have to sin, God is giving me the power to overcome.

The power of God stays hidden in our hearts, if we don’t draw it out in faith.

Now in closing:

Can God’s power stay in me untapped? With that amount of power to your disposal, can we keep it bottled up? (City on a hill, cannot be hidden?) You are like a battery! You must discharge all this power of God, that is why you were made.

But can you keep all this mercy and power to yourself? Shouldn’t we be discharging all over the place? Imagine the power God has made available to the earth by putting his Spirit in the 300 of us here! Gideon beat an army with 300 soldiers, who didn’t have God’s Spirit.

Appreciate God’s mercy every day, the more you fear him, the more you’ll appreciate his mercy, and tap into his powerful grace for your life every day. And don’t keep this to yourself.

Fear God, like really FEAR Him.

Often I have taught that fear of God is rather a healthy respect, a reverence (I obviously forgot the root of the word: 'revere'), a nice respect, instead of leg-trembling, earth-shattering, world-shaking, dumbfounding, mind-numbing, scarier than scared ....fear. I have often underemphasised the latter, in favour of a more garden variety, house-trained, Western sensible view of the Consuming Fire:

Deuteronomy 4:24 (New International Version)

²⁴ For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. 

2 Samuel 22:9 (New International Version)

⁹ Smoke rose from his nostrils;
       consuming fire came from his mouth,
       burning coals blazed out of it.

I have argued that people would be scared off, rendered afraid, wary and untrusting of such an intense view of the kind, understanding and graceful Jesus and his cool Dad. Well, isn't it a surprise (NOT), that not only have people who I have shared the Gospel with and decided against it felt encouraged (to go forth in ignorance) and understood (Psalm 14:1 makes the point clear that only a "fool" says there is no God - not much understanding there), but also, have been left open to a huge surprise on Judgement Day. I have left the door of opportunity so wide open, and shut the warnings of Judgement out so far, that through that open door the spirit of deceit, ignorance, rejection of the Truth, irreverence and insolence have come in to these people's understanding of God. 

Now, to be certain, God, and my experience of him, has been kind, loving, long-suffering, patient, very patient, gentle, strong, trustworthy, immeasurably dear and jealous for my love. However, simply focusing on that side of our Lord, has presented an image to my hearers of a rather loyal house-trained pet God (no - the dyslexic would make no mistake in reading that as dog), whose long-suffering spirit towards fools will sustain their folly. Rather, I choose to see God for the way the Bible presents him totally. My God DESERVES to be respected. We are so quick to say that respect is deserved, yet we don't apply this principle to God. He deserved it long before you had a comprehension of respect. Long before time began. You need to respect him from the word 'go'. Just as a child respects his parent for appropriately applied discipline, so we need to fear God. Children respect those that instill in them a sense of healthy fear. A boundary. It creates security. You are a child.

Before I launch into explaining and reminding you of this side of God, remember that no characteristic of God is ever out of sync with Love. That is his defining attribute, and so is holiness. His anger will always be rooted in perfect love, which, if you understand where this love comes from, should make you tremble in your boots. The rejection of perfect love is condemned...to perfection.

Now, many would argue that they can see the Old Testament God (no difference, but let's entertain the thought for a moment) being fearsome, but the New Testament God is much less likely to judge. Well, let's see.

Revelation 21:8 (New International Version)

⁸But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

Rev 14:17-20 (New INternational Version)

¹⁷Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. ¹⁸Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, "Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe." ¹⁹The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. ²⁰They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses' bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia. (300km)...

^{1 Thes 4:3-6}

³It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; ⁴that each of you should learn to control his own body^[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, ⁵not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; ⁶and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.

1 Pet 1:17

¹⁷Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.

and my personal favourite:

Heb 10:26-31

Hebrews 10:26-31 (New International Version)

²⁶If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, ²⁷but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. ²⁸Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? ³⁰For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"^[a] and again, "The Lord will judge his people."^{[b] 31}It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

 

Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that God does not take kindly to fools, or those that reject the Lamb. It's time we start instilling the fear of judgement in those who take God for a spineless diety. Do not oppose him. Start taking him seriously. You'll love him even more, for:

^{Prov 1:7} The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
       but fools ^[a] despise wisdom and discipline.

Image of the Week

 

Why? Sometimes an image just sticks with you. This was at Groot Constantia recently for Wine magazine. The lines with the slight break at the left top corner just worked so well for me. I maintain that autumn is the Cape's best kept secret, especially just after the harvest, as leaves become yellow and start falling off the vines.

For all the photography/visual communications fundies:

First off:

Camera settings: you figure it ou - lots of depth of field, overcast sky, lo ISO.... f16 rule for the southern hemisphere reads: at midday in full sun 1/125th f16 on 100 ISO will give you a good exposure. Deduct 2 stops for overcast, another for a stop lower ISO.... Aspirant photogs get way side-tracked by settings instead of the images- go play! Figure it out.

Camera: 5D.

Secondly: visual communication specs:

• This is a prime example of the secondary visual principle of RHYTHM.
• Diagonal lines against the Western reading direction gives you: Dynamism
• GESTALT's rules of visual perception utilised: the sum of the parts does not equal the whole (w.o.w. 24 diagonal lines does not equal a vineyard, or vines does not equal green corduroy pattern), proximity, similarity, any more?

Hahaha - now that we got all that out of the way - I took the pic cuz I liked it, and I composed it absent-mindedly till it just WORKED! Relax, just take pictures!!!!!!

The Saved Man's Struggle

Romans 7:21 (New International Version)

²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

I'm currently reading a very enlightening little book of devotionals by W.W. Melton, written in 1925. The book was discovered in recent years in a second-hand bookshop by Robin Hardy, who felt it worthy to be given a new lease on life. He added annotations and edited the book for modern relevance. Sifted but Saved is a great little volume that after 6 years of sitting on my shelf, have finally opened it's little revelations to me (by the Holy Spirit I believe).

What I'd like to discuss is a brief overview of Romans 7, condensed in verse 21, as observed by Melton.

The conflict of impulses and no soul has only one impulse- no man is devoid of temptation, nor is any man devoid of the good impulses available through God. In the case of the Christian, the impulses of God, if held to in faith, will always overcome that of the devil. If Christians suddenly had only the impulse to do good, then their righteousness and faithfulness would not be credible, neither admirable, since it has not been tested. God never ever leaves our side, yet Satan never ceases his attacks. This is the sum total of life, and refines our faith.

No open field for righteousness - No good cause ever went unhindered to its glorious climax. In life most good ideas and intentions will be met with resistance, by those who were born in the "objective case and kickative gender". Satan makes sure this is so. God allows this as this refines the value of righteousness.

The cost of moral wealth - moral wealth is as hard to get as material worth. If someone had to work harder for material riches than moral riches, which would he value most once acquired? Melton notes that diamonds would be very cheap if we could pick them up along the road, and no one would have the desire to possess them. The same of moral wealth. You can drift into hell, but you can't drift into heaven. Neglect will take you somewhere, but not forward.

As he thinks in his heart - Our lives will be eventually known by the secret battles that rage within us. We become thieves when we lose the battle against the temptation to think like thieves. We become a thief when we decide to steal. Not when we steal. Eventually these little battles we lose will be proclaimed in our public life. Because when we do good, evil is right there, ready to make us make small evil decisions.

Good can be done - In spite of evil, good can be accomplished. "But when one would do good, he can do good, for God is also with him, and God is mightier than any evil".

 

My own views: what I like about this, is that instead of trying to explain away Ro 7 as Paul's remembrance of pre-Christ days, or that experience of a lost sinner, it clearly shows that this is the experience is that of any saved man, any unsaved man and every man that will still live. The difference is that in Christ we can overcome the temptations of evil.

Reverend Fun

I for one, get sick of getting forwarded really dirty below the belt jokes. Reverend Fun.com is a great Christian alternative. Enjoy!

 

A quiet time that's gone global

God is really kind. As you might know I'm a music dabbler. Well, I wrote this song "Morning" (on my album Painting with Light) on a deck at my in-law's house, Barberton, Mpumalanga. I got up fairly early in the morning, while everything was quiet (Mk 1:35) to go and pray and read my bible. I also took the guitar along that was standing in the lounge. After my quiet time I wrote this song about my whole experience sitting there in fellowship with God.

I ended up recording it and putting it on my album and putting the album on Garageband.com . My song was picked on 11 March 2009 as "Track of the Day" - Acoustic Genre! Seeing how big the site is and the review-rotation at any given moment (currently more than 800 songs in that category alone on review, thousands more in the all-time chart), this was a real blessing from God, and a total unexpected gift.

I'd like to say after that quiet time I prayed: Ps 5:3 "in the morning you hear my voice, I lay my request before you and wait in expectation", but I didn't. I just thought God inspired a neat little song to celebrate our time together. Now I can share it with lots more people!

 

Click below to see my track on Garageband.com

 

MP3s available at

Rhythm Online Music Store

 

My mp3's are for sale at RhythmRecords.co.za - access through badge above.