THE GIFT OF CONFESSION

'Walk in love as Christ also has loved us.' Ephesians 5:2 NKJV

Spiritual healing takes place when you're able to confess your problems to someone mature enough to handle it and committed enough to not give up on you. What does it mean to 'walk in love'?

a) To be confident of God's unfailing love towards you.

b) To show His love to others.

c) To be able to accept their love in return. Only then can you become spiritually whole. You can only be loved to the extent that you're known. When you keep part of your life a secret, others may tell you they love you, but deep down you think, 'If you knew the whole truth about me, you wouldn't love me.' So you can't receive and be strengthened by their love. Sin isolates us, and sin and isolation will make us sick in our soul and even our body. Confession and then prayer, connectedness to each other and to God, usher in the Spirit and promote healing. To be fully known and fully loved is the most healing gift we can give to each other. The Bible says, 'Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed' (James 5:16 NASB).

We're all forgiven, recovering sinners, and no one can be secure in a relationship if they're loved only because they're intelligent, strong, or pretty, or successful. One Bible teacher says: 'When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.'

YOU ARE UNDER GOD'S PROTECTION

'He...shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.' Psalm 91:1 NKJV

What is 'the shadow of the Almighty'? In the wilderness where Israel wandered for forty years, temperatures could get up to 120 or 130 degrees. There was no shade except what was provided by the tents in which the people lived. So they understood this powerful metaphor, 'under the shadow of the Almighty'.

If you were lost in the desert, the children of Israel were required by the law of hospitality to satisfy your need for food, water, protection from an enemy, and shade from the blistering sun. It worked like this: first you had to find out the chief shepherd's name. Then you would take hold of the cord on his tent and cry out for help. When you did that, the law of hospitality required him to take you into the safety of his tent. Indeed, that same law said he had to protect you with his very life. Are you getting the idea? God's name, EI Shaddai, describes two wonderful aspects of His character. 'EI' speaks of His power and strength. 'Shaddai literally means 'strong-breasted-one', which refers to the gentleness of a nursing mother. Some days you have to go to Him and let Him hold you in His arms and comfort you. 

The poet wrote, 'Let me no more my comfort draw, from my frail grasp on Thee; in this alone rejoice with awe - Thy mighty grasp of me.' When things get too 'hot' for you, run to 'the shadow of the Almighty'.

BLIND CHANCE Vs GOD'S COMMAND

'Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvellous.' Psalm 139:14 NLT

Could life as we know it plant, animal, and human life have happened spontaneously by chance? Could our amazing solar system be the result of an accident? The more advanced science becomes, the more evidence there is for a Master Designer. Researchers continue to uncover the divine order in each tiny human cell.

American biochemist Bruce Albert, former president of the National Academy of Science, writes, 'We have always underestimated cells; undoubtedly we still do...Cells are the basic unit of life...indeed the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of different protein machines in defined positions.' The psalmist David wasn't a scientist, yet he recognised that each of us is a complex product of God's amazing hands! 'You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb...You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion...woven together in the dark of the womb...How precious are your thoughts about me...They cannot be numbered!... And when I wake up, you are still with me! (vv. 13, 15, 17-18 NLT). The average human heart beats 115,000 times a day. Our blood travels 12,000 miles every day (about twenty times the length of the UK from northern Scotland to southern England). Adults take an average of 18,000 to 30,000 breaths a day, and for the most part, we do all these functions without realizing it. Amazing! 

Today, stop and take a few minutes to acknowledge and thank your Creator for the amazing things He did with that first clump of dirt.

NEVER STOP LEARNING

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your...mind.' Mark 12:39 NKJV

God created us with the capacity to keep learning until the day we die, something we shouldn't take for granted. ' A wise man will hear, and will increase learning...'(Proverbs 1:5).

The average brain weighs about three pounds, yet neurologists estimate that we can learn something new every second, every minute, every hour, every day for the next three hundred million years. Awesome, right? But it's more than that. It's a stewardship matter. Jesus said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength .' It's impossible to determine the percentage of our minds we use, but all of us have untapped potential. Your imagination is capable of considerably more than you can dream. Yet somewhere along the way, most of us stop living out of imagination and start living out of memory. We stop designing the future and start copying the past. And that is the day we cease living and begin dying. Why? Because we stop educating ourselves. Loving God with all your mind requires maximising your mind by learning as much as possible about as much as possible. The true litmus test of spiritual maturity isn't the quantity you know. It's knowing the quantity you know. It's knowing the quantity you don't know. 

It's reconciling yourself with the reality that God is not an object of comprehensive knowledge as much as He is a source of wonder. And that sacred sense of wonder ignites a holy curiosity to keep learning more about the Creator and His creation.

GOD AND YOUR WORK

'Whatever you do, do well.' Ecclesiastes 9:10 NLT

In the Bible, you will notice that everybody works! And most of its heroes had secular vocations. Issac developed land, Jacob was a farmer, and Joseph served God best by staying in his well-paying government job rather than starting a non-profit, faith-based organisation to do charity work. Daniel was an immigrant who attended Babylon's version of Oxford and grew to be prime minister. Lydia was a profitable businesswoman in textiles. 

Conceivably, the ultimate expression of how much God values work is Jesus the carpenter. More than three-quarters of His life, He occupied Himself in the building profession, creating benches and tables, and was translate 'carpenter' comes from the Greek word tekton, from which we get our word technology, and it would contain the capability to do stone or masonry work. The Bible was penned by workers, about workers, and for workers. Work was God's idea. 'The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it' (Genesis 2:15 NIV). The first man, Adam, was a landscaper. By identifying what you have been called to do in life and giving yourself fully to it, you are as 'ordained' as any pastor who stands in a pulpit. It's a pity we use the word secular when it comes to any kind of work other than church work, because God doesn't see it that way.

All honest work earns His smile of approval. When it comes to work, the thing He requires from you is wrapped up in these words: 'Whatever you do, do well.'

GOD'S FIRST COMMISSION TO US

'Fill the earth and govern it.' Genesis 1:28 NLT

The first thing God told Adam and Eve to do was to 'fill the earth and govern it'. The fact that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden doesn't mean they were limited to the Garden of Eden. God told them to 'fill the earth and govern it'. 

Stop and think about it. God was inviting Adam and Eve to explore. Everything outside Eden was uncharted territory. They could travel 24,759 miles in any direction and never see the same landscape twice. There were 196,949,970 square miles of virgin territory to explore. One way we glorify God is by exploring and educating ourselves about everything He has created. One author explains: 'The astronomer who charts the stars, the geneticist who maps the human genome, the researcher who seeks a cure for Parkinson's disease, the oceanographer who explores the barrier reef, the ornithologist who studies and preserves rare bird species, the physicist who tries to catch quarks, the chemist who charts molecular structures, and the theologian who studies God have one thing in common. All of them are explorers. They are fulfilling the Genesis commission. And their exploration honours God if it's done for the right reasons and results in the right response to know Him and to worship Him.' There will always be some scientists who arrive at atheistic conclusions. But rather than abandon science, we have been called to reclaim it. 

If God created everything, then everything carries His holy fingerprint; all truth is God's truth. Abraham Kuyper said, 'There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, 'This is mine! This belongs to me!''

A WHOLE NEW APPROACH

'The word became flesh.' John 1:14 NKJV

When the angel visited Mary, he said, 'Don't be frightened...God has decided to... bless you! (Luke 1:30 TLB). Yet when it comes to approaching God directly, many religions are ruled by fear. 

Philip Yancey says: 'Certainly the Jews associated fear with worship...A person "blessed" with a direct encounter with God expected to come away scorched or glowing or maybe (in pain) like Jacob...Among people who walled off a separate sanctum for God in the temple and shrank from pronouncing or spelling out the name. God made a surprise appearance as a baby in a manger. In Jesus, God found a way of relating to human beings that did not involve fear...A New Covenant...that would not emphasize the...gulf between God and humanity but instead would span it...I learned about incarnation when I kept a saltwater aquarium...You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank, they dove for cover...to them I was deity...too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty, my attempts at healing ...as destruction. To change their perceptions...I would have to become a fish is nothing compared to God becoming a baby. Yet...that is what happened at Bethlehem.' 

The God who created matter took shape within it, as an artist might become a spot on a painting or a playwright a character within his own play. God wrote a story, only using real characters, on the pages of real history. 'The Word became flesh.'