It's Not For Us To Wonder How

“How shall this thing be seeing that ….”

When Mary the mother of Jesus was told by the angel Gabriel that she was going to give birth to a child that would save the world from sin, she wondered how it was going to happen. She wanted to believe but to her there were several reasons why it was not going to happen. She was looking at the facts that would negate this promise of God. The normal process of life is that for a woman to get pregnant, she would normally have to have sex with the proposed father of the child. However here was God telling her that she didn’t need to be with any man to see the fulfilment of God’s promise to her. All she needed to do was to believe. God would make the rest possible by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the book of Joel, specifically Chapter 2 verse 28, God promises to pour out his spirit upon all flesh and promises that his spirit will cause the opening of eyes so that men and women will see visions and dream dreams. We all have dreams and visions for our lives and there are some of us who think we need psychiatric help due to the dreams we have envisaged. Like Mary, we ask ourselves, “How shall this thing be?” We seem to be looking for one excuse or the other to let God know that the dream or vision he has impressed upon our hearts are just too impossible to accomplish. The fact is that even when we see dreams about what we are going to be, we want to understand the process. Our finite minds desperately try to grasp and understand how God is going to make it happen. But can I say that understanding how is not really our role.

The story is told in the book of 2 Kings 7 about a famine in the land of Israel. Elisha brought a word from God telling the king about what God was going to do in the land. However the king’s adviser scoffed. Elisha promised him he was going to see what God would do but he wasn’t going to partake of it. Somewhere else there were four lepers outside the gate of the city. They were impoverished men who had no hope. However they reached a decision about their future and they acted on that decision. God used their decision to bring deliverance both to them and their nation.

It’s really not our role to worry about things like how. Ours is to walk in obedience to the vision or dream God has given us. When we do that, the power of the promise keeping God will come to help us become all that he has called us to be. What vision or dream do we have or have we seen? Now is the time to act on it. 

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.  

I Would Die For You

It is well established that the Old Testament is a shadow of God’s great promise and plan for mankind and that he had promised came into fulfilment in the New Testament. However the Old Testament is not redundant with regard to how we are to live our lives. Just because the new covenant has come which is better with regard to the promises and the fulfilment of those promises, it doesn’t mean we still can’t glean something from it. The Apostle Paul tells us that ALL Scripture is inspired by God for correction, instruction, reproof. There for the Old Testament definitely still has a lot of lessons for us with regards to the life we live in Christ.

In the book of Genesis we see the first marriage between Adam and Eve. The relationship is great and going on well until we see the Devil through the serpent enter the picture. He beguiles her, playing on her desire to be more than she is, to be like God. She doesn’t realise that she is already like God. In the end, she takes the fruit God had commanded them not to eat. Not only does she eat it, she gives it to her husband as well. When God calls Adam and ask him what happened, Adam lays the blame for the whole fiasco on Eve, even though he also eat the fruit in spite of the fact that God gave the commandment to him. As a result of their disobedience, God curses them and ejects them from the Garden of Eden. However, he makes a promise to them that Christ would come to save them from the effects of their sin.

Several prophets like Isaiah prophesied about the coming of the Messiah, the one who would save his people from their sin. When Jesus finally came, he said that he had come to take away the sins of the world. He came not to impute people sins on them but that as long as they believed on him and in him, he would not only save them from the effects of their sin but from sin itself. In the end, he hung on a cross to fulfil the word earlier spoken that cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. He took your sins and my sins on the cross and subsumed and erased them in himself. He did condemn anyone who came to him but he accepted all men as they are as long as they would allow him to make them.

Myles Munroe says that if you want to know how a thing is supposed to work, then you need to read the manual from the manufacturer. In the life of Christ we find a great pointer with regards to marriage. There are several new-fangled ideas about marriage. I must confess that I am amused by those who think that new ideas about ancient customs are the best. To best understand marriage we need to look at the relationship Christ has with the Church. We understand that marriage is a mystery and is similar to the relationship Christ has with us, his body. The first thing we see is that unlike Adam who blamed his wife for his failings and therefore died alongside her, Christ does not impute our sins on us and took them upon himself and died for the Church. He took our punishment, our pain, our exclusion and separation from God on himself and made everything right between us and God. Unlike Adam who did not seek the mercy of God but rather decided to take the path of blaming, Jesus took upon himself the role of mediator between God and men thereby bringing peace between both.

There are so many things we can learn from the life of Christ and the relationship between him and the Church as it pertains to marriage. Like Christ, a husband should “die” for his wife; protect her, as much as lies within his power keep her from hurt, pain and shame. He should not only be a mediator between her and God but also between her and men in that he has a role to play when she falls out with friends or others. Like Christ expects and believes the best about us, knowing that we can be more than we presently are, so the husband should be. Equality in marriage is all about being your own person and standing alone. If equality is what a wife seeks then she shouldn’t be surprised when as the first sign of trouble, the man takes off and leaves her to fend all by herself. You can’t be equal and expect help or support when trouble comes.

The Apostle Paul said men were to love their wives while wives were to respect their husbands. It wasn’t that he didn’t want wives to love their husbands or husbands to respect their wives but he understood that respect is what a man needs most while love is what a woman wants the most.  This is seen in our relationship with Christ. He showed his love by dying for us while we show our respect by first acknowledging him as Lord. When we model our marriages on the relationship Jesus has with his Church, we will have storms and trials but I believe we will come through them.

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.