Sunday Mornings

  Psalm 44 I have often wondered: ‘If we’re all made in the image of God, God must really have an interesting appearance; His face to begin with.’ The word of God in John 4:24 however tells us that God is spirit, and as such does not literally have a face. So, by this we know that God’s face in today’s context is merely anthropomorphic, and represents His presence and favor in a life. We would notice the blessedness of God’s face from Aaron’s blessing for the children of Israel in Numbers 6:24-26, where it says: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” How beautiful can this be? What then does it mean for God to hide his face? God’s face is said to be hidden when it is obvious that His divine presence and favor can no longer be felt. It is a feeling of deep sadness and spiritual emptiness, which often arises in the heart and stems out to affect output. The P...

To combat Satan's seduction, Jesus relied on Scripture rather than some mysterious spiritual power unavailable to us. Jesus waged this struggle as a complete human being, and He used no "special resources" that we don't have. Matthew 4:1-11 Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to a desert. There He was tempted by the devil.  2  Jesus went without food for forty days and forty nights. After that He was hungry.  3  The devil came tempting Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to be made into bread.”  4  But Jesus said, “It is written, ‘Man is not to live on bread only. Man is to live by every word that God speaks.’” 5  Then the devil took Jesus up to Jerusalem, the holy city. He had Jesus stand on the highest part of the house of God.  6  The devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. It is written, ‘He has told His angels to look after You. In their hands they will hold You up. Then Your fo...

  And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. ( I John 5:14-15 ) What a blessed gift God has given us in prayer - an avenue to make requests. But why are all my prayers not answered? Why do I get the exact opposite of my requests? I pray for God to preserve the life of a loved one, and after many days of sincere uproars, the person still dies. Let us face the truth, this has definitely been our story at one point. So what happened to our open cheque (prayer)? You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:3-4 I believe that every request will be granted but there is a condition: the only request...

  "If you are the Son of God..." Matthew 4:3&6 Today's episode is a sequel to the previous blog post on the serpent's lies that makes our heart turn in rebellion to God and His laws. Matthew 4 gives an account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Unlike the children of Israel in the wilderness, Jesus was not persuaded by the devil's lies to doubt God and what He said; and unlike the first man - Adam, Jesus did not fall to the tricks of the devil. May God grant us similar victory as we rest in Jesus and His faithfulness to deliver us from the tricks of the enemy. Amen. "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." Matthew 3:17 It is so fascinating that just before we begin chapter 4 of Matthew's gospel, chapter 3 ended with a declaration from God. This was heard at least by Jesus Himself and probably all who were standing there. But it is precisely the same thing that God spoke of that Satan was attacking in the temptation narrati...

  ...so that we are not outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. II Cor 2:11 That old serpent who has been deceiving the world from the beginning has been using some old tricks ( Rev 12:9 , John 8:44 ). The bible instructs us not to be ignorant of his designs. Today we visit the Garden of Eden to uncover 4 of the tricks he uses to turn our hearts away from God. It has worked severally, but God wants us to be aware of it; so that we can detect it and overcome him ( Gen 4:7 ). 1. God is withholding something good from you: If Satan can succeed in making God look wicked in your eyes, it will be very easy to rebel against His laws: "Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?" ( Gen 3:1b ) This question begins a lot of mental analysis. You count what God says you can do and cannot do. And suddenly you realise that God is limiting your freedom in some sense. But this is not true. There is freedom in Christ, but godly freedom always has hea...

  And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Gen 25:28 By the grace of God, today we will be looking at the Esau syndrome that plagues many of us who desire earnestly to do God's will, but oftentimes, our passion comes in the way. To set the context of today's key verse, if we go a few verses behind, we see that Rebekah was barren vs21 . Isaac prayed for Rebekah vs21 . God answered his prayers and Rebekah is pregnant with twins vs21 . Before they are even born to have done anything right or wrong to win God's favour ( Rom 9:10-13 ), God tells Rebekah that the older would serve the younger vs23 ( Malachi 1:2&3 ). It is plausible that Rebekah must have told her husband what God had revealed to her. It is also plausible that Isaac must have probably got a revelation from God too on this matter. (These are not explicitly said in the bible and so we must be careful how we use these plausible scenarios). But our anchor text says that Isaac love...

  Pursue holiness, without which, no one will see the LORD. Hebrews 12:14 Dear brothers and sisters, I found it necessary to write a follow-up to a previous post on this blog ( gutsy guilt ) because like I mentioned in that particular post, in scriptures, God is portrayed as eternally just in punishing all evil, but at the same time, He is eternally loving and ready to always forgive and be merciful to us when we err. These two extremes of what I call the God spectrum can be found everywhere in the bible, for example in Exodus 34, when God was introducing himself to Moses, this is what He said: And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation." Exodus 34...