At Home with God

When God finished His work of creation, he rested. Its not as if he was tired and wearied but he looked at the awesome work that he had done and said that indeed it was good.. It was good in the hands the perfect craftsman until he rested.

 

Gen 2:2-3And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

So God accomplished his purpose of creation and rested. We can say God entered into rest in his creation .Isnt that just marvelous! That God of creation would sovereignty find rest in his creation. Its not the kind of rest that you find from a tiring and a daunting task but it’s a sovereign rest of accomplishment.

God made us in his own image and declared that behold man is very good. Man in this act then is immediately the prime recipient of God’s rest in which we rest in him having found a home in him.

This is the kind of rest that God has prepared for his people, His treasured possession.

This is the kind of destiny that David had envisioned in his psalm.

Psalm 23 1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. 3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

David who was a shepherd knows innately of His God as the chief shepherd. Shepherd who does not merely look after the sheep but is the chief overseer of all that he is. He knows his shepherd as the one who makes him rest and the restorer of his soul. He knows his shepherd as the one who guides him even on the advent of danger and as the one who prepares a meal for him in the midst of his enemies.

Enmity in my view is anything that will prevent us from being at home and at rest in God. We were first enemies in our own minds and alienated from God.(Col 1: 22) Man is the one who ran away from God and not God who ran away from man . Yet God is the chief restorer of our souls who has brought us near to himself in his body of flesh by death . (Col 1:22). Something very fundamental happened in this operation that really portrays how dear and close we are to God. He reconciled us in his body and not in any subsidiary or intermediate form. The body of God is his home, is his temple, and is his dwelling place.

Jesus defined the home of God as his mansion which has many rooms. He reconciled us back to God again. He proved that we really belonged to God.

He came to his own yet his own rejected Him (John 1:12).

Do you know that God finds his Home in you?

We usually sing how lovely is your dwelling places ooh God. We know God to dwell in heaven; a celestial space up above and beyond this limited universe yet through Prophet Isaiah God proclaims that not even the heavens can hold him.

Isa 66:1 Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?

We usually allocate God a spatial location of dwelling but God doesn’t reside in things made by hands .

Vs 2 All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

God looks for someone. Gods heart has always been for man, that God and man would dwell together and so in the fullness of time Jesus was manifested as the word of God ; as the one in whom the fullness of God dwells .(John 1, Col 1.) And paul refers to us as the temple of God, the dwelling place of God whom God will not join with a harlot.

1^st Cor6: 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

You have been joined with God hence becoming one spirit with him. God has infused himself in us and we have been infused in him and yet this is not a secondary operation but the design of God from the beginning.

This is why we are told to honor God with our bodies because we are a house containing God in the person of his spirit.

What a joy to find our dwelling place with God. We are in a mystical union. Don’t see yourself as an outsider, You belong to God and God belongs to You. The spirit of the sovereign God dwells in you. This is the good news that the gospel announces. Man has been reconciled to God. Man now has God as his everlasting enjoyment. Follow the second post on this topic as we explore what being at Home with God means to us today, cheers .

His banner over us ,,,,,,

Song of Songs 2:1-4 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.

Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens.

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. 4 He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.

I can’t get enough this soap opera that ensues in this book of Songs. The beloved story continues all the time. In our last post we examined the exchanges between the lover and the beloved in a bit. We saw the beloved captivated by her lover but she recoils back and she is intimidated by the texture of her skin. Meanwhile the lover pursues and showers her with love despite her murmurings. We also saw that this love story is a picture of our relationship with God which climaxes in Christ who entices us with love and we are captivated by him. I cant get enough of the way God is always in the mission of love.

The conversation carries on as the beloved says that she is a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Rose of Sharon is a depiction of different species of flowering plants that are highly valued. The beloved discovers her value, she is extremely valued, a lily of the valleys.

This is how the Wycliffe Bible commentary describes the Rose of Sharon

I am the rose of Sharon. The bride is still speaking. It is difficult to determine which flower the bride refers to. The only other occurrence of the word in the OT is in Isa 35:1. Crocus appears to be the best translation. Sharon is the Mediterranean coastal plain between Joppa and Caesarea. In the time of Solomon it was a place of great fertility.( (Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Old Testament, (Chicago: Moody Press) 1962.)

His banner over us,,,,,,,,,,

So we can see How esteemed we can be when we realize how beautiful and loving we are. It’s like glowing and reflecting the same light which shines on us as in a mirror.This is actuually a mystical union

The lover replies and describes her beauty in a more phenomenal way like a lily among the thorns is my darling. We must use a lot of typology here to suck all the juice from this love story, after all Christ is the perfection of any love story. We will discover that Christ is really the rose of Sharon, he is the valuable fragrant lily of the valley, most valuable and to be desired of men.

The Lover echoes her beloved’s new found status by describing her as a darling, a lily among the thorns, what a picture of our God resonating with us in love. She s not only a lily but a lily uniquely found amongst thorns, she is conspicuously beautiful and captivates her lover.

This is what God sees in us. Value. We carry within us treasure. That is the beauty of being human. We are treasures in earthen vessels ,,, yea that sounds like lily among the pricky thorns . Out of the miry clay we are formed and established upon the rock who is Christ.

What a status we have now? We are loved and actually this is the status we had right from the point of our creation. For God Chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be Holy and blameless, in Love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons in conformation to his pleasure and will.(Eph 1:4-5)

love has been our design ever since . Our true design is compatible with love . Like the beloved we resonate with an accurate expression. We have been taken into the banquet hall and showered with love immense. His banner over us is love. God is in the eternal activity of loving us.

Love has set everything in motion, its like the software that runs every system harmoniously. We have been installed in love and the fruit of his love has become sweet to our taste. We know this because of our capability and potential to love and to respond to love. All this is in conformation to his will. The way God has designed us is that he is sure that we have everything good and fit within us to love and to respond to love. We just have to pay attention to the symphony that is in the atmosphere for the glory of God fills the earth like a canopy. I believe the glory of God is also in his love. Gods love is immense and great and available to our joy and bliss. If surely there was no love, the universe would not be running.

The Beloved Story Continues

In February I posted about ‘The beloved’ where we explored in a bit the dramatic Love story that ensued in what I consider the greatest soap opera icon of all times, King Solomon.

Yet this dramatic epic love story is a picture of our relationship with Christ with God being the one who entices us and we are captured by his love for us .We see a dramatic scene which ensues where the beloved is captivated by her lover and while this happens she recoils back and she is intimidated by the texture of her skin.

Song of Songs 1:6 Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! (Esv)

(Please) do not look at me (She said) for I am swarthy. (I have worked out) in sun and it has left a mark upon me. My step brothers were angry with me, and they made me keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard (My complexion) I have not kept .

(Amplified)

This is a picture of us looking down on ourselves because we deem ourselves as undesirable, dark, and full of sin. This is what sin consciousness does to us. When we put so many standards on ourselves instead of focusing on God’s love for us, we will always see ourselves as having fallen short. Despite all the good works that we do in the context of the law, we will feel discouraged and bad about ourselves . Believe me you don’t want to feel, wearied and worn out for appearing good on the outside and utterly wasted in the inside.

Vs 7 tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions? (ESV)

The chapter ends with the beloved calling out on her lover to explain some few things. After all this why should the beloved appear to having been veiled among the beloved’s companions? I see the veil representing the Old covenant which is a picture of the Old covenant which veiled us from seeing the true glory of God.

2^nd Cor 3 : 13 . Nor (do we act) like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze upon the finish of the vanishing splendor which had been upon it . (amplified)

But its not God who veils us, its us who veil ourselves or rather we are veiled when we are under the law from seeing the true glory of God in face of Christ . Whatever comes in between you and God as a barrier preventing you from enjoying relationship with God is a veil.

But the veil is taken away when we turn to the Lord, when we listen to the words of Christ who entice us with his love.

Yes , down to this (very ) day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies  upon their minds and hearts .

But whenever a person turns (In repentance) To the Lord, the veil is stripped off and taken away. (2^nd Cor 3: 15-16, Amplified)

While the beloved is out to complain about some few things about her being veiled, what she doesn’t know is that her beloved has being eying her for a long time. The murmurs and mumblings are swallowed in the words of her lover.

Song of songs 1: 14 -15“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. 15 Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”

Isn’t it amazing that our lover doesn’t wait for us to craft our apology script or our self pity script but is already endeared to us. To Him we appear as a sweet smelling aroma, lovely all the way. This is the romance that takes place between God and us. God endearing us with himself until we are left captivated by him.

Let’s do away with the little foxes that brushes this romance aside and let us gaze face to face into the yes of the one who loves us. The eternal activity of God is loving us more and more. As long as eternity endures and forever is present, God is in the business of pouring is love into our beings.

Vs 17 My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies. 17 Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains.

Until the song resonates within us that we know that the beloved belongs to us and we belong to him. It’s the story of Christ and the church.  We are the bride of Christ, the beloved of God. Christ loves the Church so much that he lay down everything for her, and now by cleansing her and presenting her as a pure bride without a spot we see love taking a pedestal How I pray that we resound with the song of our love together.

Husband love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, So that he might present the church to himself in glorious splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such things (That she might be Holy and faultless .) (eph 5 :25-26 Amplified)

Picture the exploits of the lover and the Beloved in song of Songs as having been fulfilled and manifested in the love between Christ and the church (which is you and me .)

Knowing that God loves us first is the best way to respond to Gods love, our love finds a pin point accuracy when we draw attention from ourselves and gaze into the eyes of our love, until we gaze and see the glory of him who loved us first, there and then we will reckon ourselves as complete / perfected in love .

Living consequently

God is in the mission of love and consequently we are living in it. We are called to live after the image and the likeness of the creator. There is a Swahili saying that says ,’mtoto wa nyoka ni nyoka’ the offspring of a snake is a snake. The point here is not trying to invoke that we are God and actually the scripture is brave enough to refer to the children of God as gods but to infer that we are taking after our father because we are his offspring.

The inheritance of a son is to live by his fathers 
resources. The elder brother didn’t know that all that belonged to his father also belonged to him and consequently lived as though he was a mere servant rather than a son.

Acts 17:28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.

 Paul enters Athens and immediately notices the religious inclinations of its inhabitants. As a popular evangelist, many of us will prefer that he lashes out his King James bible (which was not in existence at the time) or a copy of the scroll and mete out Gods word in rage and anger towards these Godless pagans. But on the contrary Paul invokes the words of their finest Poem, That in him we live , we move and have our being and we are his offspring.

I am thinking that Paul should introduce our real God and install him as God among these pagans but Paul’s understanding of the gospel concludes that man is not a stranger before God. If man exists it’s only because of God. All human expressions and expectations derive  the truth that we are from God. We have been created in his own image and likeness.

This means that God is the infinite standard of our being and we take from Him as a consequence of him preceding us and designing the design of our frame. Living consequently therefore is living after the image of our creator our true frame being designed in true Holiness

,,, and put on the new self, created to be like in true righteous and Holiness (Eph 4:24)

There is something in us that resonates with pin point accuracy the nature of our maker. The ability for man to love and respond to God is God given. Gods Grace is flaming in us .The ability of man to love a fellow man is God given and infact when God is demonstrating his love to humanity as we see in Christ , he speaks of this love as that of a friend who lays it aside for another friend.

When Isaiah the prophet speaks to the lost nation of Israel, He refers them back to the rock to which they were hewn.

Isaiah 51: 1 Listen to me you people who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord ; look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn.

This speaks of something exponential, that the material that made us is the rock. We were cut from the rock and consequently we are from the rock and the only rock we know is Christ. This means that we are one with the material that made us. That’s why we are told that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb 2:11-12) both he who makes men holy and them who are being made Holy are all of one, that is very significant and important for us to know. We are as a consequent of another person. The life we have is as a consequent of the life of God manifested in Christ Jesus.

This is what I meant by this post Living consequently. We are living as a consequent of another persons action. We live because God lives, we move because God moves. And in this administration God desires that we partake in his divine nature in this pattern. God wants us to live by him, through him and in him in his unforced rhythms of grace where his life pours to ours and ours pours to him. Let him teach you to live consequently of him

The beloved

As we get into the valentine season, much is being said about love flowing in the air. In the streets of Nairobi Kenya and in the sphere of the youth, much excitement and expectation is flowing in the year. While this is going on I just landed on my journal which I scribbled like four years ago. It’s about the beloved as described in The book of song of Solomon which is in arguably the book of romance in the Bible.

This dramatic love story is enshrined in the antics of the greatest soap opera icon to have ever Lived, King Solomon. We know this off course because he had the innate ability to entertain Seven Hundred Wives and Three Hundred concubines. We may think of This king as the greatest Immoral being to have ever appeared on the face of the earth but am taken aback by the potential he had of flowing out love and passion to all her beloveds but off course after its all said and done, his adventures were deemed as vanity of vanities.

Away from scrutiny, the book of Song of Songs records conversations full of love between the lover and the beloved and occasionally we see third party factors attesting to the love that flows between the two, pretty much like the love story that God initiates with us until the whole world testifies of it.

The beloved unleashes her love and passion towards her lover in the beginning of the book.

Song of Songs 1:2-4Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is better than wine;
³     your anointing oils are fragrant;
your name is oil poured out;
    therefore virgins love you.
⁴ Draw me after you; let us run.
    The king has brought me into his chambers.

The conversations continue through out the chapters. As we are going to find out, the bliss of this aura of love is not so much endowed in the beloved expressing her love to his lover but it’s about the Lover and how he unleashes tones of love that captivates and changes the whole world surrounding the beloved. The beloved is captivated by her lover and she lets into the motions of love. This is a type of the bride, the church who, you who is the bride of Christ. If we can love is because God has loved us first and therefore the rule of first love is in motion. Love is the biggest force of all times, it’s innate and wired in us because we have been created in the image and the likeness of God.

When we look into the face of Christ and see his glory in the face of God, we are drawn into his chambers. The kind of love makes us new and glorious. The beloved confesses that though she is dark, she is still lovely.

I am very dark, but lovely,
    O daughters of Jerusalem,
like the tents of Kedar,
    like the curtains of Solomon.vs 5

When the earth was created it was dark and void and without form. The darkness here represents the void and formlessness that only one lover can fulfill. She is dark so that all the brilliance comes from her lover alone. We know that our sufficiency does nt come from us but solely on Christ. And so the exchange continues in an endless run of lovable rhymes. We see this love finding its completion in Christ.

He is the love of our life and the king who has drawn us into his chambers. He has serenaded us and we are captivated in his love. Let us see the blistering centre where love springs from the heart of God. Its in this centre that human life finds meaning and completion. Souls are stilled and hearts abandoned in our one and only love

worry not

in the cool of the night
His love in you Holds
In the silence where future is unknown,
even the crickets in the thickets
are assured of this
as sure as the night endures
Daylight will come and steal the night away.

and such a hope is ours friends,
The year is up and rolling
And as the steam of the will
and the comfu of the intellect
meets all that life demands
Know that you operate in his love

Lest you get tired and wearied
wondering where has my resolutions brought me
Dont you know what they said
that you re blessed coming in, blessed going out
therefore don't stress yourself over life
what you will accomplish
what you have not, have have not

isn't life more valuable than possessions?,
How quickly you forget the ways of a child?
worrying about nothing, because papa has it all fixed
How about a momentary gaze at the birds
to realize that we are more of worth
than the creatures which toil not
 Christ in us and Christ in us.
that's How things roll, on this effortless side

Goodnews for the year

Good news for the year; God doesn’t register a scorecard against us

 

Its yet another great year full of expectations and hope. Its another year that is promising us changes, growth, new challenges, new opportunities and the many iverse things we expect to see in a new year.

 

January is that time of the year where New Year resolutions are trading like Hot –cake. Our performance levels seem to sky rocket because we believe somehow that there is something new and special something that fosters an extra impetus for life as we approach a new year. Yet when the clock ticks and the month crosses over many of us feel weighed down by the expectations we had for the new year. We get into that place where the rubber meets the road . I have been to that place too, where I made many rules for myself to govern me through the year but immediately February starts I get struck with the numerous demands of your resolutions list, stressing, isn’t it?

 

 

Romans 8:1 there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Esv)

 

8:1 there is only one conclusion. God has not registered a scorecard against us. In Christ discover the true gift of no condemnation. Discover how to walk in the manner of your true design (the spirit) and not after the manner of contradictions (flesh) (Kainos amplified)

 

 

 

 

So what about the scorecard?

Life comes along with its demands, some demands we impose for ourselves. At the end of the day we have scorecards to hit. We are governed by life full of deadlines, bills to pay, people to satisfy, rules to follow, seasons, plans, etc. When we don’t attain the levels which life has for us, we get upset, disappointed, derailed, furious with ourselves and others.

 

I love the conclusion that Paul arrives at. That now there is no scorecard registered to us by God. We may be tempted to think that the same way life demands from us is the same way God demands from us. God thoughts though are higher than our thoughts and his ways higher than our ways.

 

So what now?

In Christ discover the true gift of no condemnation. We don’t live by our lives resolutions but by the gift of God. You wonder why many people are dissatisfied with life, its because of the demands we think we have to meet in order to enjoy life.

 

In this new year, you may have set goals for your life(which is not bad, actually very commendable.) you may say, in this year, I want to pray more, to be a more loving spouse, to be a more devoted Christian, etc. You may stick to your resolutions or you may fail. The conclusion is this and is what gives me insurmountable peace and comfort that God is not busy examining my next failure or success. What we should be worried about is being in Christ rested and having his life influencing us everyday of our lives. It gives God pleasure to avail to us his life.

 

Friends there is a life that is higer than this lowly life of deadlines, resolutions, bills to pay, worried about the next meal. This life is called In Christ, where the life of Christ is our life, where the peace of Christ is our peace, where the inheritance of Christ is our inheritance.

 

In this year you can live a live free from condemnation. Even as you look forward to achieve certain things , know that you are not governed by what you do, by your failures or success. You are in Christ even when things are not working for you. I call this Peace and serenity right in the centre of storms of life. You are blessed.