PRIORITIES

Time with Jesus - Monday, 09 January 2012

Hi all,

The Martha/Mary situation is widely known in Christian and other circles. What took place is difficult to understand outside the context of the male and female roles of the Jewish people of those days. To some extent African culture is similar in that domestic work was primarily done by the women. This is perhaps best illustrated with reference to what took place when men, women and children travelled from one place to another

To illustrate this, think of the journey that was made by Jesus, Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Jerusalem for Jesus’ Bar-mitzvah. The women and children would leave Nazareth and travel to the place where they would stop for the night. The women would then pitch the tents and prepare a meal for the men. The men would leave Nazareth later, after the women had departed. The idea was to arrive at the campsite in time to have the evening meal together. Before his bar-mitzvah a boy was regarded as a child and would travel with his women. After his bar-mitzvah he was considered a man and would travel with the men. A little thought about this custom helps us understand how and why Jesus was “lost” on the return journey.

In those days the women were the homemakers and this was fairly rigidly applied. The role of women in today’s Muslim countries gives us an understanding of the role Mary and Martha would have been expected to follow when guests arrived. The behaviour of Martha confirms this. However, Mary did not follow suit. We are not told why. We do know that Jesus’ attitude to women was more tolerant than was customary in those days. It’s been said that He was one of the first male advocates of gender equality. I suspect that this is true.

So Jesus was not offended when Mary sat and listened to Him teach. Martha however was irritated by what she saw as Mary leaving the work to her. Furthermore, Jesus did not rebuke Mary for laziness. What He did was comment on priorities. Both ladies were right and both should have been busy preparing for the evening meal. But Jesus indicated that this could have taken place later. They could have both listened to Him teaching. Then they could both have proceeded with the preparations for the evening meal.

Today we all have problems with priorities. It’s essential that we all establish what they are and respond accordingly. This is needed by all of us today in our busy lives.

This morning’s meditation looks at this in more detail.

Blessings

Jim & Phyllida Strickland.

PO Box 1694, Randpark Ridge, 2156, South Africa.

Priorities

Priorities! Priorities! We make them every day. To rush around the kitchen, or what does Jesus say? We fluster like a housewife, getting everything prepared. But sitting at the Master’s feet; for that she isn’t spared. A meal was in the making. She had to make the bread. But what was more important, was what the Master said! The Mary/Martha saga we all know very well. Mary chose to listen. Martha couldn’t tell, That she was too preoccupied with incidental things. When she could have been hearing the Lord; The King of Kings. The problem was her gender and the things which women do. She couldn’t pause a moment, to hear His words so true. In fact she was offended, with her sister sitting there. “I think she should be helping. There’s dinner to prepare.” But Jesus answered, “Martha where’s your priority? The dinner could come later. You could sit here with me! Put aside anxiety and madly fussing round. If you would come and listen, I’m sure you would have found, Time to do the housework and hear me teach as well. Mary did the right thing, as time will surely tell. This attitude of Martha was certainly not wrong. The dinner must be perfect and satisfy the throng. But Martha’s inner spirit would not be satisfied. No mater how she worked for Him it could have been denied. We need to pay attention, if we’re to here Him speak. We may long for the water, until we’re feeling weak. We may be parched and thirsty and longing for God’s Word. But if we are too busy, His voice will not be heard. The place where we are living could be dry as dry can be. But Jesus has a sustenance that very few can see. He gives us living water; He gives life’s daily bread. He gives us all that’s needed, to do what He has said! So when we’re feeling hungry and we’re longing for a meal. The Lord will fill our belly, with a bread that is more real, Than anything the baker could lay upon your plate. And Jesus’ living water, will more than satiate. So let us set our focus, on the sustenance we need. Alter our priorities and ask the Lord to feed, Us with His living water; and bread from up above. And we will be abounding in all the Master’s love. It’s all in our priorities and that which we decide. A life of mad activity or sitting by His side. Jim Strickland – Written Monday 9th January 2012.

BY GRACE

Time with Jesus - Sunday, 08 January 2012

Grace; God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. That’s what I was told more years ago than I care to remember.

Around about that time, I read an article by one of the world’s most popular preachers. He said that in all his years of preaching, not once had he attempted to put together an exposition on John 3:16. ¹⁶ "For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NLT He added that he didn’t think he was able to do justice to the text. It was just too “holy” for him. Every time he tried to construct a sermon on the verse, he felt overwhelmed by the enormity of what it contained. In view of this, he thought it was unlikely that he would ever do so.

When it comes to the grace of God, I feel something like he must have felt. How is it possible to compose anything that would do justice to the grace of God? Does anyone understand grace? I doubt it. Grace isn’t something to discuss. That’s an impossibility. Grace will never be an intellectual exercise. It’s something to be experienced. Then when you’ve experienced it, you know for sure that you don’t really understand it.

Describing the grace of God is something like describing colour to a man born blind. Where do you start? We all have heard the hymn Amazing Grace by Rev John Newton. Singing it, reading it or listening to this hymn touches the very centre of our very being. “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind but now I see.

As a young man of eighteen I encountered the grace of God in a limited way. I say in a limited way because I don’t think any man or woman who has ever lived, has plumbed the depth of God’s grace. His grace is infinite and His grace is free. How can anyone understand or explain this?

We live in a world that is defined by reward. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded by passing the end of year exam. Work hard, please the boss and you will be paid at the end of the month. Do something criminal and you will be “rewarded” by a fine, a time in prison, or perhaps both. Study hard and you will be rewarded with a matric, a degree, or even a doctorate. Just about everything we do is in some way connected by a reward or punishment system. But not grace. God makes His grace available to us when it’s the very opposite of what we deserve.

I’ve often said that God is not fair. Fairness is a human concept that does not apply to God. If God was fair, I would be sent to hell for a million eternities. I’ve spent most of my life earning the reward of sin. I should receive the wages due. Then I find that Jesus Christ has already picked up my pay check! The debt to God has been paid in full. All I have ever had to do was to repent from my sins and ask His Son to forgive me. It sounds easy. It sounds too easy. It is easy. But it’s not cheap. It was paid for in full by Jesus Christ that day on Calvary. It cost Him His life and the price was paid in full with His blood. Can I understand that? Not really. But I can experience it.

Fifty years ago I experienced His grace. It changed me forever. Today’s meditation looks at grace.

Jim & Phyllida Strickland.

By Grace

The grace that Jesus offers is utterly unique. It is the very quality that we all need to seek. It’s not some smug acceptance that we can recognise. It’s being granted something that is more than a surprise. It’s having been His enemy and worked to bring Him down; And finding we’re forgiven and asked to share His crown! It’s getting just the opposite of all that we deserve; And taken to His Father’s House where we will have the nerve, To see Him as our brother. Adopted by His Dad! Knowing that what we have done should surely drive Him mad! We cannot comprehend it. We’ve done our very best, To bring dishonour to His Name and found that we are blessed. He didn’t have to do it. He said that it was free. The cost was quite impossible for anyone like me. I knew I couldn’t buy it and that I couldn’t steal, This gift so indescribable; I thought it wasn’t real. How could the Blessed Saviour, who shouldn’t ever die, Do the indescribable, for folk like you and I? I knew I had insulted Him. I dragged His Name through mud. In terms of Christianity, I surely was a dud. Like every other sinner, my heart was frozen cold. And yet he said He looked at me and said He saw pure gold! I thought He must be seeing things. How could His words be true? It must have been somebody else; It wasn’t me on view. That’s when He said, “My precious child, you don’t appreciate, The limits of My sovereign grace and mankind’s fallen state. You’re right. You don’t deserve it. No man could ever earn, The price I paid to save you. So here’s what you must learn. No matter what you’ve ever done. No matter where you’ve been. I knew what you were doing and that you were unclean. You didn’t want to know Me. You much preferred your sin. Your mind can never comprehend the mess that you were in. But all it took to save you was one tiny drop! The blood I shed on Calvary. My blood would make you stop, Your independent action and turn you back to me. It was My grace that touched you and set your spirit free. And in My sight you’re holy because of what was done By grace, for you on Calvary when you embraced My Son. Jim Strickland – written Sunday 8th January 2012

GOD NEVER FORGETS

Time with Jesus - Saturday, 07 January 2012

God never forgets anything. He is perfect in every way. For Him to forget would mean He was not God. In His memory, everything that has happened is known down to the smallest detail. What is even more amazing is that every detail of what is still to take place is known down to the minutia. He has known all this from before the creation of the world. He knows this in a way we cannot even begin to understand. He knows the instant when we will be born and the instant when we will die. He knows it totally and completely. He will never forget anything.

God has another “quality” we need to try and understand. He has absolute and perfect control of His memory. He can choose not to remember something. It’s not a matter of Him forgetting. That’s impossible. But He is able to choose not to remember. Let’s see how it’s put by Jeremiah in his prophetic word concerning the New Covenant. ³³ But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Jer 31:33-34 ESV

“I will remember their sins no more.” Note that He chooses not to remember. He hasn’t forgotten them the way you and I would forget. He transfers these memories to a “place” in Him where He has decided that they will not be remembered. It’s a decision He makes. He chooses not to remember. He is able to do so because He has perfect control of his memory. From our perspective it is the same as forgetting. We are able to totally rely on this. It follows that from our perspective; if He chooses not to remember our sins, it is much the same as forgetting them!

For as long as we are His sons and daughters, He will choose not to remember our sins and iniquity. If, for some reason, we ever ceased to be His sons or daughters, He may choose to remember them again. This means that God has graciously granted His sons and daughters the privilege of influencing His decision to remember our sins no more.

Today’s meditation looks at what has taken place historically; the holocaust and the crucifixion. These historical events have played a major role in the lives of Christians and Jews. God was present during them both. These details He will never forget. He says, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands”. Isaiah 49:16 GW It’s possible that Isaiah was referring to the nail prints in the hands of Jesus. To the best of our knowledge, they are still there.

Blessings

Jim & Phyllida Strickland.

God never forgets

O Lord, You are so different in everything You do. Forever You are faithful, consistent, sure and true. You don’t forget Your people. They’re never on their own. It surely is unthinkable to say they are all alone. Man persecutes Your people; he makes a holocaust. Yet even in their darkest hour; they never were divorced. You saw the rough brutality; The death camps and the pain. You heard them calling out to you; they thought they cried in vain. But never for an instant were You not present there. And even in the gas chambers, they weren’t beyond your care. They thought they’d been deserted; that You had let them down; Their skin was used for lampshades, their bones were even ground; And auctioned off as fertiliser. All was stripped away; Their clothing and possessions. The theft was just child’s play. The shoes of little children were piled up in a heap And in those dreadful Nazi camps, all Jewish life was cheap. Yet all this is familiar to what occurred that day, When You were taken captive and You were led away. You didn’t try to fight them You let them do their worst. They mocked You and they spat on You. They said that you were cursed. They beat you like an animal; they crowned Your head with thorns. They gambled for your clothing and gazed at You with scorn. They nailed you to a wooden cross and hung You up to die. And all your friends could do for You, was hang their heads and cry. I think the Nazi’s “lessons”, were based upon that day. The murder of Christ Jesus; There was no “better” way; It was the right “solution” to obliterate the Jews. The final way to deal with, the people whom You choose. They made them die of hunger of sickness and disease. The guards had their permission to shoot them as they please. And though six million perished, they just could not achieve, Their ultimate solution. But Lord it made You grieve. O Lord, You won’t forget it. It’s etched into Your hands. There’ll come a day of judgement in each and every land. The Love of God will triumph, when justice is applied. And You will see the perpetrators criminally tried. Lord, thank you for the statement that you will not forget. Your memory is perfect and there is still a debt, To pay for what has happened to Jesus and the Jews. The day will come when all of them by You will be accused. And those, whom You find guilty, will all be led away. And for all their atrocities will find they have to pay. Jim Strickland – Written Saturday 7th January 2012

FRIENDS ARE FEW

Time with Jesus - Friday, 06 January 2012

“And they all lived happily ever after!” At school we occasionally had to read fairy stories. You know, “Hansel and Gretel”, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty; lovely stories. They all seemed to finish well. Everyone was happy. Even Cinderella ended up marrying the prince.

These fairy stories made a lasting impression. As children we concluded that everything would finish well. “Everything’s coming up roses”. But every generation that goes by proves that everything doesn’t come along with a story book ending. My parents were confronted by World War one. I went through World War two. My children lived through Poll Pot and the killing fields of Cambodia. Our grand children are faced with a world that seems to be completely out of control. The myth of the happy ending has been thoroughly discredited. The holocaust is probably the ultimate lesson in unhappy endings. Perhaps “And they all lived unhappily ever after!” is closer to the truth.

Why? There are many answers but only one solution. The solution is knowing Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. But why do things go wrong? The simple answer is our sin nature which only Jesus Christ can repair. Certainly, Satan is the root problem. But he has achieved much of his success by our mutual distrust of each other. Put simply, we are not willing to befriend each other. This is where racism begins. This is where things start to go wrong.

In the 1950’s, it was not easy for an Englishman to befriend Afrikaners. We couldn’t befriend each other because of what had happened during the Anglo-Boer War. The concentration camps for the Boer Women and Children still loomed large in the memory of many people. I sometimes wonder if perhaps these concentration camps didn’t inspire the Nazi’s to “improve” on their own unique brand of hatred and oppression. Certainly, even as a child I wasn’t always welcome in the homes of some of my Afrikaans speaking friends.

Is this not perhaps the crux of the matter? We don’t know how to befriend each other. The movie “South Pacific” had a song in it that was banned in South Africa. It was called, “Carefully Taught”. It was associated with cross-cultural friendships and marriage. The song included the follow words, “We have to be taught before it’s too late, before we are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people our relatives hate. We have to be carefully taught!” Tragically it’s still true. Even in the New South Africa we struggle to break the race barrier and befriend our brothers and sisters who look different from what we do.

I must confess that I don’t find it easy to befriend men. Part of it is because the usual masculine lifestyle of sex, booze and sport has no appeal to me at all. It never has. Even before I was saved in 1960, these activities were not my scene. So I’m a bit of an oddity. My love is for the Christian lifestyle. My passion is Jesus Christ. As a result I don’t meet many non-Christians. Some will say Jim’s a “Holy Joe”. I hope it’s not true. I struggle with it and try to include others in my circle of friends. But even so, in the past 70 years I’ve not really managed to make the grade with other men. I don’t suppose I ever will.

Blessings

Jim & Phyllida Strickland.

Friends are Few

There has to be a reason why we men have so few friends.       I cannot understand it. Perhaps friendships depend,

On those we’re introduced to, most likely by our wives. But few have long-term friendships that last them all their lives. I know that in reality, men friends are very few. And in my past experience, there’s only one or two. In fact as I look backwards and down through all my years, There’s very few whose passing, would cause me to shed tears. The guys I was at school with, I never will forget; But since I’ve started working, there’s few men I have met, Who’s really been a friend to me. A few have been a pal. But normally I’ve met them as I courted some sweet gal. Of course I’ve met a lot of men. Acquaintances? OK. But very few continue and still are friends today. I wonder if this problem is mine and mine alone? Perhaps I should be thinking, of the way that I’ve been known? The men for me are usually like ships that pass at night. We seldom take the time to pause. We part when it grows light. Of course I’ve met the people my wife has come to know. And they have all been marvellous. In fact they’ve helped me grow. But few of them were friends of mine except by accident. And this is surely not the way that being friends was meant. But there’s someone Who’s special; a friend for fifty years. I met Him as a brash young man; a mass of guilt and fears. I didn’t know what I should do. My life was one big mess. And someone introduced me to a Person Who would bless. He’d make my living purposeful. He looked into my face, And told me what was wrong with me. He said I needed grace. He said He would be with me and stick closer than a brother And since I’ve got to know Him, I’ve found there is no other, Man who wants to know me, as an eternal friend. He said we’d walk together, till time comes to an end. And since I fell in love with Him I’m bored with other men. And we have a relationship that’s far beyond my ken. Perhaps I am unusual? Perhaps I’ve got things wrong? But I’ve not met another man who fills my heart with song. No other human friendship can possibly compare, With walking with my Saviour and knowing He is there. Most men are insipid. Sex and booze and sport, Is not the sort of lifestyle, I ever could support. And if this makes me different, I think I’d rather be, A friend of Christ my Saviour, Who has befriended me. Jim Strickland – Written 5th January 2012.