A TOUCH OF PRESENCE - PART TWO

Placing Christ in the centre of your world and reading and meditating on the Word of God will change your life.

I would love for you to let the promises of God dismantle any negative grid you may be viewing Scripture through and in your spirit receive the Word, like seed into fertile soil, so it germinates, producing within you a transformation into a New Testament, new creation person.

Psalm 34:2  

My soul shall make its boast in the Lord;

The humble shall hear of it and be glad.

When I escape calamity, I will recognise the hand of God. I will brag about Christ’s power, knowing it was not me that caused my deliverance.

No-one’s glory should be of themselves.

God’s glory is Jesus His Son.

The Son’s glory is the Father.

The Holy Spirit has come to glorify the Son.

The glory of the church is not the leaders, not the preachers, not the ministers or even the good works, the educational institutions, the hospitals, the transforming of lives and the thousand other things that are wonderful about the church. The glory of then church is Jesus Christ Himself. 

We should boast about our God.

There would not be a more arrogant boast that to declare ‘I can do all things’. However there is not more correct boast than to say this and add, ‘through Him who strengthens me’.

I will make sure my praise of Him is not private, but public, so the open hearted will hear and they will also be glad with me when they hear The Lord Jesus praised. 

3    Oh, magnify the Lord with me,

      And let us exalt His name together

Our private victory is our opportunity to include as many as we can from all around to join and amplify the praises of God. The greatest intoxication we can bring others to is the party of praising together. 

Most all of us become evangelists of our own great experiences, wanting to share it with others. 

It would be hard to better the joy of worship together.

Who is David calling to? His family and the other 400 who came to join him at the cave of Adullam immediately after this even at Achish. If we are leaders then we must lead the people we lead to bring praise to the Lord.

However, how can we magnify the Lord?

Is He not as big as He ever will be?

It is impossible for us to actually make the Lord larger than He already is, however, the exercise of magnifying Him is to make Him larger to us. Our focus on the challenges in life can make the problems seem large and God small. We magnify the problem and diminish Christ. We give power to the problem and disempower the Father’s work in us. We spend far too much time thinking about the negative, ignoring the power of Christ. Promises, not problems are what we must meditate on.

This is why it is so important to gather together and worship, because it is in that environment we reset our thinking and recover our faith and receive strength to carry on.

4    I sought the Lord, and He heard me,

      And delivered me from all my fears

The Lord is found by those who seek Him. He remains a mystery and invisible to those who have no heart for Him.

He may not always deliver us from our circumstances, but His presence will always deliver us from our fears of the situation.

5   They looked to Him and were radiant,

      And their faces were not ashamed

All those whose faces are toward Christ will shine as reflectors of the glory they behold. Even the lifeless moon shines with glory because it reflects the shining sun.

The phrase ‘Lift up your eyes’ in terms of discovering an answer, appears at least ten times in Scripture. Where are you looking? To whom do you look first in a crisis.

When Israelites were bitten by snakes and dying with the poison, Moses erected a snake dead on a pole. All the Israelites had top do was turn their vision from their pain and the snakes that brought it and look at Christ crucified and they were healed. 

Jesus told Nicodemus that as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness so he too would be lifted up, leaving us to conclude that all those who look to the crucified Christ, which in fact was the defeat of Satan, the healing of sickness, the death of our sinful nature, the destruction of death, the total cleansing from all sin. They had deserved the plague. Their constant venomous complaining, murmuring and grumbling attracted the worst of demons, and their poison took such serious hold that they faced certain death. Their leader gave them an answer and told to look at it. All they needed to do was to make eye contact with the hoisted dead snake. All you need to do is to look to Christ

We shine when shame is absent, and the Father will answer those who seek Him with boldness unashamedness.

For more information on C3 Church or the upcoming Presence Conference just click on the name. 

See you in church!