Christ In Me

This is by far one of the most significant promises from God that He works all things together for our good, it is significant because we are human beings and at the end of the day we tend to mess up because it is in our human nature; which pretty much means we will mess up over and over again hence we need and have a Saviour. We mess up so much that at times we are unable to clean up our own mess and that is where God comes in, in All His Sovereignty He is the only One able to clean us up and the mess we find ourselves in, regardless of whether we are the cause of the mess or not.

Many instances in the Bible shows great men and women of God mess up or find themselves in sticky situations and have God work all things together for their good. I am currently busy studying the life of the father of faith also known as Abraham. Early in scripture we see Abraham get chosen by God, receive God’s promise over His life, believe God, mess up and have God clean the mess he caused. Abraham is called the father of faith yet we recognize that he also resorted to self effort when he felt like God was not speeding up His promises. But the life of Ishmael and Isaac and the contrast between their mothers one of whom represents slavery and another freedom resembles how God worked all things together for everyone’s good. Check Genesis chapter 12- 16.

I am quite appalled on how we as human beings are so intolerant of mess ups, mistakes and imperfection. We do not give much room to mess ups and things not working out perfectly but God allows for mistakes in fact God had a plan before the beginning of time to clean up our mess ups through the blood of Jesus Christ. God embraces our humanness and imperfection and still looks at us and remains pleased with His work creating us.

These chapters remind me of my own life, how I receive God’s promise, believe, resort to self effort and have God back me up and I believe this is why it is called a walk and journey with God because we do not always get it right, yet God always gets it right. God is not surprised by our mess ups, He is not panicking over my mess wondering “How could Palesa mess up so badly?” instead He already has a plan in motion which will work all things together for my good.

Honestly, God is so incredible and I thank Him that He is God and that He alone IS and will always be God there is no other. This is the God that catches us even before we fall.

It has been quite a while but Happy New Year to all, I often come here to reflect and write about how awesome God is and how He is constantly faithful even when I am not faithful which really demonstrates His Love for us who fail Him. Nevertheless, today I was inspired to write about whether God needs our help or not, now before we get into the main scripture for the current draft let us first remind ourselves of God’s initial and current order. Genesis 1 vs 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground”.

This scripture is important because it indicates that God created mankind so that they will have dominion over the earth, a teaching by Dr Myles Munroe opened my eyes so much when he taught about the kingdoms. This means that God rules the Kingdom of Heaven, yet when it comes to earth He made humans to be rulers, before and after the fall we still remain the rulers over this earth. In other words, God as Sovereign as He is cannot take back His Word and suddenly rule over the earth as well, that would make Him a liar and we all know God is incapable of lying otherwise He is not God. We know who the liar is but anyway, God or any other spirit cannot intervene on earth without a body, so the body is important because without a body then you are just a spirit and as Dr Myles put it then it means you are illegal. Spirits are illegal unless they are in a body, hence Jesus had to come and die for our sins as a human, hence demons have to enter a body in order to operate.

See why we need to pray? God can only intervene here on earth with our permission as the rulers. When we pray we invite God to have His way over the earth or in our situations. Here is the scripture that got to me, Isaiah 44 vs 24 “I am the Lord, your Saviour I am the one who created you. I am the Lord, the Creator of all things. I alone stretched out the heavens: when I made the earth, no one helped me “. It blew my mind because recently, or maybe it had been occurring for a while but I can have this sense of having to do something in my own strength and without realising it, the flesh hates having to depend on the spirit which is in tune with the Holy Spirit for help. It is easier to do things using self effort, but this is not how it should be, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit to take a bath. So God was using this scripture to convict me and remind me that I do not need to “help” Him. He is completely God and will continue to be God regardless of what I face. I truly repent for this because it has left me burnt out, tired and demotivated because what you start with the flesh you have to sustain using the flesh. God understands our nature though but it is an important lesson.

You know the song Reckless love? It is one of the best songs ever written in my opinion. It clearly brings out God’s love and how tangible it is in the most practical way. Okay, that did not make sense but I love how God loves. I was overcome by such overwhelming feeling of God’s love after watching and pondering upon a movie that depicts the story of Ruth and Naomi. It is a beautiful love story and God has shown me like Lisa Harper always says, the Bible is a love story. It is true!

God loves us without expecting anything in return from us other than to receive His love and make it ours, this is shown in Mark ch6 where it is shown that Jesus was in His hometown and He was limited. Most preaching tells us that we limit God’s Power and they refer to this text in ch 6 of Mark, and it is true however we fail to realise that limiting God’s All Sovereign and All Mighty Power is nothing compared to limiting His Love to work in our lives. God is love, we see this by how God the Father willingly gave His Only Son to die for our sins and use His righteousness to make it ours so that we can be reconciled to Him as His sons and daughters. Jesus in Mark Ch6 vs 1-6 wants to love on people, He wants to show His hometown the love that other towns and areas are experiencing from Him. He is not just our Healer but He loves Healing us and is one of the many ways He makes us experience His love. He provides for us because He loves us and He takes pleasure in loving us and showing us what true love is.

1Cor ch13 is the chapter of love and the Holy Spirit made me feel His love and reminded me that it is tender and not hard, I know He made me experience His love in tenderness because I am so often hard on myself because I believe if I am hard on myself or love myself in a hard way then if others love me with the so called “hard love” which is loving someone by teaching them a lesson or giving the “tough love” then I would not get hurt or would become less sensitive to it because Id have practiced it on myself first. Now God Himself reminded me and actually made me feel it in His presence His tender love, it is not rigid, it is not self-serving, God does not love me for what I can do for Him, He does not love me because I am saved by Him, He does not love me because of my actions, His love is limitless because He is Love. He defines love, the definition of Love in its pureness is derived from God. He loves us even when He knows we are going to reject Him.

The verse in Mark ch6 where it is written that Jesus marveled because of the people from His hometown’s unbelief is amazing because what could surprise God? nothing! yet Jesus marveled at how people chose to reject His love when He was willing to love them beyond themselves they rejected Him. Jesus loved Judas knowing that Judas will betray Him, God the Father gave His Son up His Only Son to die for our sins knowing that some will reject Him! Yet it is awesome to know that our rejections does not stop God from reaching out to us and loving on us, remember God is not forceful, satan is. God will not force His love on us yet He will always be ready to pour out enough of His love to make us not lose hope on love. He loves us beyond ourselves and chooses to do it, Jesus was not forced to die for our sins, He loved us past the pain He felt and the ridicule and embarrassment.

In that Reckless love song it is said that God is not concerned with what He gains or loses by loving us, He simply chooses to do so because He is Love, He hates sin but God is incapable of not loving us it is not in His nature. He simply loves because He is…

God has given us EVERYTHING in Jesus and continues to give us His Love in its purity and how He created it, just because the world messed it up does not mean He loves us any less or His love has altered over the years. He loves you and will never unlove you it is impossible for God to unlove when He is love.

This title was given to me by the Holy Spirit Himself reminding me of how I am saved and preserved by Grace only. God has had to remind me over and over again that I am no longer under condemnation in Jesus Christ, what that means in simple terms is that I am found innocent and not guilty of sin in God’s sight. So why is it that people especially Christians condemn themselves and others so much? for instance if I got saved around the same time with person A and it so happens that I no longer desire to go to clubs like I used to before I got saved, but person A still wants to go clubbing then why should I condemn person A? I grew up in a church that could condemn you and kill your spirit slowly. But I have learned with my own walk with God that I got saved solely because of the Grace of God and His love made me empty me of myself and repent for what I needed to repent on.

Repentance was such a scary word for me, for a while it crippled me particularly before I got saved, but the Holy Spirit has revealed to me the beauty of repentance and how necessary it is. I mean I am a full blown Christian and God still leads me into repentance but this time my attitude has changed because I have seen what repentance has done for me. God is Love and because He is, we get to repent willingly without the feeling of being condemned. As the Holy Spirit continues to renew our minds and transform us, a lot of repentance will take place but because He does so with love repentance is always welcome because of the freedom thereafter.

The chapter in Matthew 19 there by verse 16 speaks about the rich young man and this is such an incredible verse because yet again we find someone who wants to be saved and righteous by their own might. The Holy Spirit reveals this verse as the man not being rich in terms of monetary value but rather in pride. He seeks to be saved because he has done all that the commandments of Moses requires, but because Jesus is God He knows that pride is also a form of sin and calls him out by saying he should go and sell all that he has and give the money to the poor and that he will have riches in Heaven and from there on follow Jesus. Remember the verse of those that are poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom? well Jesus implies that the man is prideful and that he should become poor in spirit hence He proceeds to say it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is not against being rich, if anything God is against poverty, but He means that if being rich causes us to not need God then we must much rather be poor because a person who does not see the need for God will not see the need for Heaven, they will think that since their riches has gotten them things here on earth that those very riches will get them to Heaven.

So further on to verse 26 we all love this verse and speak it for many different reasons, but the Holy Spirit said that when Jesus said This is impossible for human beings, but for God everything is possible when He answered the question Who then can be saved? It simply means we as human beings will never be able to save ourselves and enter the Kingdom of God. We can never obey the commandments of Moses and even if you do; like the rich young man said he did, It will never get you to be righteous or saved to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather it is Jesus Only that can save you and make you righteous enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus said everything is possible with God even saving us that means we should accept His offer to save us because He has already done it on the cross. So why try to save yourself which will yield no results because you will fail every time, rather than letting the Saviour save you? God truly loves us into salvation and we see His heart in it.

“Christ existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through Him God created everything in the Heavenly realms and on earth… Everything was created through Him and for Him. He existed before anything else, and He holds All creation together.” Col 1:15-17
Fast forward to verse 18 “He is the head of the body, the church; He is the source of the body’s life. He is the first-born Son, who was raised from death, in order that He ALONE might have the first place in all things… Through the Son, then,, God decided to bring the whole universe back to Himself All things, both on earth and in Heaven.
Verse 23… “But now, by means of physical death of His Son, God made you His friends in order to bring you, holy, pure and faultless into His presence.”

Colossians chapter 1 is quite a mouthful but I mean goodness, it is such an important chapter and really defines the true essence of Christ Jesus as the Only Son of the Living God and it goes to show that if it was not for Jesus we would not be in right standing with our Father God in Heaven. I love how the Bible showcases the role of Christ in Holy Trinity. God the Father Created the universe through the Word and we know that the WORD is Jesus Christ Himself, and what excites me even more is how Jesus has been the ultimate Promise of God to reconcile us with Him.

The Holy Spirit reminded me that every promise that God has made over me is brought about through Jesus Christ and because of what Jesus Christ has done for me, that is why Jesus said that we should ask God our Father for anything in His Name. The name of Jesus is not just any other name, God gave Jesus Christ the name as the official and final name that is above every other name. It is the name of the Son of the living God. The First-Born Son might I add. Would you give up your only son the first born at that to die for the sins of people that may potentially reject you and your son?

So I want to say Thank You to God that 1. God the Father gave up His One and Only Son Jesus Christ to leave His rightful place with Him in Heaven and come to earth (where it really is not an ideal place someone from Heaven would choose to spend even a second in) to die for our sins, fulfill the Law for us, defeat death and the power of sin over humanity as well as give us eternal life. I mean I truly believe that although Christ was fully God and fully human, He could have still decided to not go through with the mission of God. And God the Father? having decided to send His Son to suffer for us knowing all too well that we human beings can and will reject His Son and His sacrifice for us. The Holy Spirit, knowing that we will grieve Him and at times disobey Him, He still chooses to never leave nor forsake us. What is that? The love of our amazing God.

He gave it all up for us to be reconciled back to Him, us? human beings? fragile, disobedient, unpredictable, easily fooled and mere sheep. God is indeed Love, Jesus Christ with no sin chose to be obedient to the point of suffering what we should rightly suffer because of our unrighteousness and He continue to leave the 99 to find the 1. God wants to do life with us so much that He sent His Only Son to be our Savior and the Way back to Him. So Thank You God in short for never giving up on us. We serve an amazing God and we stand in awe!