A new era?

There has been much talk over the last little while of a new era, not just a new day or season, but a new era. Some may say I do not see anything that different. Where is this new era?

However, if we look at new eras in the Bible, none of them started that auspiciously but they all became planet changing; Noah, Abraham, Moses / Joshua, King David and Jesus himself.

Noah’s obedience ushered in a whole new era based on righteousness when God washed the planet of sin and iniquity through the flood, but it started with Noah obediently spending 120 years building an ark in the desert. For over a century, he would have had to endure the mocking of his contemporaries but even they must have wondered when all those animals turned up and entered the ark and it began to rain. Once the planet had been cleansed, God started again with Noah and his family – a new era that had started very inauspiciously.

Next, God called Abraham to found his dynasty, his people, the Jewish nation through a son not yet born to an old couple, because ‘Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness’ Genesis 15: 6. He trusted God, despite his and Sarah’s old age to give them a son. He was even prepared to sacrifice this son of the promise.  Now, despite every attempt of man and the enemy, the Jewish people flourish and have returned to their Promised Land. 

Moses too could never have realised the call on his life after his aborted attempt to fulfil his calling in his own strength. For 40 years Moses lived in the desert with the sheep, probably wondering if the call on his life had been lost forever with his reckless act of murder. For 40 years the entitlement and privilege of the royal Egyptian lifestyle was removed till all that was left was a man who had no illusions about who he was. ‘Moses spent 40 years thinking he was somebody; 40 years learning he was nobody; and 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody.’ 

Yet when God called him, he didn’t even jump up and say, ‘Here I am God. Send me.’ Five times he told God, ‘No!’. But God knew what was in him and by the time of the announcement of the tenth plague, Moses left the great Pharaoh’s presence ‘hot with anger.’ He was now so confident of who God was and what He could do that he led the Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt, took them across the Red Sea and despite all their moaning and complaining, led them for 40 years in the wilderness. God used Moses to build a new nation based on worship to their God at the tabernacle. It was a new era and foreshadowed the later great act of deliverance of the Son of God. Moses’ assistant Joshua completed the assignment and took the next generation into their Promised Land. 

Then Jesus himself, the ultimate promise of redemption for all mankind, started with a baby born to poor parents, placed in a manger because there was nowhere else to put the infant Son of God. Hardly the expected start. Even after his 3 years of ministry doing good and preaching the Kingdom of God, the crowds that had been so blessed, turned on him and demanded he be crucified. Yet that was all in God’s plans and crucifixion led to resurrection and the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost ushering in THE new era – salvation for all. 

The hallmark of all these new eras were obedient men and women, doing what God asked of them. It’s the same in our day We are called to walk in obedience to what God is saying to us and the Church. Has the new era already started with the revivals spreading across the universities and campuses in USA? Time will tell but we do know: 

28 “And afterward,

    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

    your old men will dream dreams,

    your young men will see visions.

29 Even on my servants, both men and women,

    I will pour out my Spirit in those days. Joel 2: 28 – 29 

May we too be men and women of obedience and faith to trust that God is bringing about incredible events in our day that will see millions swept into the Kingdom ready for the return of the King of the Kings. 

Isaac the sacrifice

Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. Genesis 12:2

I wonder what Isaac thought about the expedition to sacrifice him. We know that on the third day of their travels as they were climbing the mountain to offer the sacrifice, Isaac asked his father about the lamb for the burnt offering (Genesis 22:7). Abraham’s wonderful words of faith that God would provide must have been like a knife in his heart. He knew who the offering was going to be even of Isaac didn’t.

However it is almost certain that Isaac was not a small boy but an adolescent at this time and in verse 9 it says that Abraham bound Isaac and laid him on the wood of the fire. Was it at this point that Isaac realised he was the burnt offering? Abraham was over 100 years old and though no doubt fairly fit from his life of farming, I am sure Isaac would have been able to resist his father’s attempt to make him the sacrifice. He must have agreed or at least not resisted being bound and laid on the altar. Why?

My only conclusion is that he had great faith and trust in both God and his Father. He must have realised that if he was the lamb to be slain, there was a good reason. Isaac had to trust that either God would provide a lamb or he would be it. I find this level of trust very inspiring but also daunting.

I doubt if any of us will be required to make that level of sacrifice but we may well have to give to God our most cherished dreams, plans, hopes and if God does not provide a ‘ram’ they may have to die. There have been times in my life when I have had to hand over to others something that I have poured my heart and life into. I have also had to watch a once fruitful ministry die because God’s hand was no longer on it. To this day I do not know why but I do know I did the right thing painful though that was.   

I pray today you may have grace to do this if necessary and to trust God with all your most cherished dreams and hopes. So whether you continue with them for years or feel the time is come to hand them on you will have the confidence to know what God’s will is.  He is faithful and can be totally depended on.

Trust in the Lord

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3: 5 - 6

Fifteen years ago my dad wanted to celebrate his 80^th birthday by taking the whole family to South Africa. We were all so excited to be going to stay in a very nice hotel near Cape Town in the middle of the South African summer and to have Christmas in the sun.

About two weeks before we left, God said to me, ‘Give me the holiday’ which I was holding onto very tightly. He wanted me to place it in his open hands. I immediately said a loud and emphatic, ‘No!’ God asked me, ‘Why not?’ I replied immediately, ‘because I don’t trust you. You will take it away from me.’

I was so shocked but I know God was not. I thought I was a woman of faith but obviously I was not. God knew what I felt but it needed to be revealed to my stubborn, unbelieving heart. For the next two days a battle ensued with God just waiting quietly and lovingly and me trying hard to place this wonderful holiday in his hands. Could I trust God to do what was best because underlying all this was the thought that if you gave something good to God he would take it away?

Today I still find it shocking that I thought such an awful thing about my God who only wants and gives good things to his children.  However he knows best and we have to trust him. Abraham had a far harder test of faith. God asked him to sacrifice his one and only child on which so many promises hung. He trusted God that even if he had to kill his son, God would raise him from the dead (Hebrews 11: 19) so that the promise would be fulfilled. Of course as Abraham raised the knife to kill Isaac, a ram was provided but he was prepared to do as God had asked. Amazing faith!

So what happened to the holiday? Two days later, after a lot of giving and taking on my part, I finally managed to give our wonderful holiday into God’s hands and say, ‘I trust you.’ Of course we had the most fabulous holiday but I didn’t know that. I had to trust God. That was the start of many tests of faith but God has been so wonderful. Even when doors have closed that I so wanted to open, it has always been for the best. God’s love never fails.

God sees

‘You are the God who sees me ….. I  have now seen the One who sees me’ Genesis 16: 13

There can be a tendency on our part to believe that God neither sees nor cares about us nor our situation in an individual way; we are just another believer in the midst of millions of others. When our prayers don’t seem to be being heard or not as we would like or within our time frame, our cry can echo that of both Martha (Luke 10:40) or the disciples in the midst of the storm (Mark 4:38 ) ‘Lord, don’t you care?’

The story of Hagar though is a source of comfort that God knows, sees and cares about us. He sees and acts and it has nothing to do with good behaviour on our part or a faithful prayer life. God sees and intervenes on an individual basis out of his great compassion for us. 

Hagar was Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant. God had promised Abram that he would become a great nation but at the age of 86 and Sarai 76, no child was in sight. Sarai came up with the plan that they should build their family through a child from her maidservant and gave her to Abram to sleep with. She duly became pregnant and then having had the child Sarai could not have, Hagar despised her mistress. As a result Sarai started to mistreat her. Hagar ran away and on the desert road the angel of the Lord met her and asked her what she was doing. She told him her story and he told her to return to her mistress but not to worry she would have a son and so many descendants that ‘they will be too numerous to count’. Knowing that it was God who had spoken to her, she declared that ‘you are the God who sees me.’

14 years later when the child of promise, Isaac, had been born, on the day he was weaned, Abraham held a feast but Ishmael mocked the occasion. Sarah demanded Abraham get rid of both Ishmael and Hagar. Reading between the lines, there had probably been quite a bit of tension between Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham was not keen to send them away but God assured him that it was alright to do so and he would make both boys into great nations.

Hagar was again in the desert and this time dying for lack of water. No doubt feeling very resentful at her mistreatment, she and Ishmael lay down waiting to die. Again the angel of the Lord appeared to her and reassured her that God knew her situation and had not forgotten his promise to make her son a nation. He showed Hagar a well and the situation was saved. The final encouragement from this story is that ‘God was with the boy as he grew up’ (Genesis 21:20).

God promised Abraham and Sarah a son who would become a great nation and even when they conceived their own version, he extended the promise to cover Ishmael and Isaac. God is faithful even in the midst of our devising our own plans and will continue to work out his promises despite us.

Today if you are feeling that God has forgotten you or the promises that he has made to you, let us take fresh heart from the story of Hagar. Despite her weaknesses God did not turn his back on Hagar or Ishmael. He saw them and today he sees you. On both occasions that the angel met with Hagar in the desert he called her by name. The angel was not just passing by; he was sent by God to Hagar personally to meet with her in her hour of need. He will do the same for you.