It's Friday but Sunday is coming Part 1

Saturday night about to switch off the light and cram in 8 hours of shut eye before the early morning wake up for church! Been sick all day with flu and quite a high temperature (the first time I've been under the weather in my year and a bit here in Cape Town though!). Maybe the temperature was a warning not to get out of bed to watch the Sharks and Stormers game but alas, I didn't heed my body's "escape clause" and hence my body has embraced what feels like even more weakness...more than the usual amount of course! But I digress.
With us just coming out of the Easter weekend, and with the evening meeting series "Anno Domini" coming to a close tomorrow night, I have been struck with the thought of Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection were not just events that happened, but are cataclysmic moments that need to be embraced to the full if we are going to live in a glory to glory capacity of resurrection power.
Scripture is clear, "the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me", and "greater works shall you do". With encouragement from scripture of these truths, the question then is raised, why are there not many living in the FULLNESS of Spirit-filled, Christ-following existences?

And here's my thought:
Maybe we don't live in resurrection power...because we are not dead.

"If a grain of wheat does not fall and die,
it abides alone!"

Our embracing of Friday and it's denial of self, counting all things as loss style attitude will give us a fuller grasp of Sunday in order for the Mondays and Tuesdays to be walked out in power.

Born to be wild!

I'm lying in bed, sleep somehow resisting me and there's so much noise going on in the house next door that I'm sure they must be re-decorating at midnight or an elephant is trying to change the channel in their living room. Either way, my thoughts are more caught up with Christ and his Kingdom and therefore I assume that the bible will bring a kind of stability to my heart and mind at this late hour. Luke.9:57-62 so arrests my soul to such an extent that I feel God shake me more awake than i have ever felt before in my life! In this short passage of scripture, Jesus encounters 3 people, all professing a desire to follow him but all with a footnote attached. Check it out:

"As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He said to another man, "follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family." Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God"

Remember what we have been called to! We are called to be a wild, nomadic people who count all else as loss for the sake of Christ and his Kingdom! A people who are not attached to assets, homes, riches, comfort! A people who are not attached to the past and constantly looking over our shoulders and a longing for 'how we've always done it". A people who are not attached to the opinions, infatuations and the praise of mortal men!

Comfort, nostalgia and a fear of man will rob us of our future!

We are a wild people.
We serve a wild God.
And the future that lies before us is one that is far wilder than what we can imagine!

My heart and flesh cry out!

In Luke's account of Jesus' last few days before the cross, we read in chapter 22 of how Jesus withdrew up the Mount of olives to pray with his Father. In this moment of intimacy, Jesus knew the absolute horror of what lay before him. Looming large ahead was not the fear of beatings, torture, rejection, betrayal, denial, piercing or mortal death, but it was the absolute terror of knowing that his Father's presence was near to being ripped apart from him. The deep intimate union that Jesus and his Father shared was such that Jesus' ministry was littered with phrases such as, "the Father and I are one" and, "I only do what I see my Father doing" and, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me". He and the Father were so inextricably linked that the mere thought of separation from that closeness lead to verse 44; "And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground".

And it is because of this that we can take heart.

Because Jesus submitted to his Father's will, and did not give room for his very legitimate fear to dictate how he would respond, 2000 years later we can take courage from the fact that though we may face moments of fear and anguish, the presence of God will never be removed from us again. Romans.8:35 throws the almost mocking rhetorical taunt, "who shall separate us from the Love of Christ?" right into the face of the enemy.

In light of this, the question is how will you and I respond when fears and anguish's grip our soul? Do we submit to the presence of fear and become victims of our circumstances, or do we submit to the never departing presence of the Father?