What's in your jar?

Being an adult can suck. A lot. If I had known 20 years ago what I know now, I would have changed a whole lot. For one, I would have stopped myself from buying such unnecessary things, in order to pay for the necessary with greater ease. Managing expenses is hard. Weighing up between wants and needs is hard. Keeping yourself out of debt, is even harder still. Let me just say it, being an adult is expensive. I wish there was an alternative. But, alas, there isn’t. Everything we need costs us – a lot of the time, way more than what we like.

What makes our absolute need of God any different?

Last Sunday, during our time of worship at Church, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me through two accounts in Scripture. Firstly, the account in 2 Samuel 24 where a plague had fallen upon Israel due to David’s sin. Gad, the prophet, instructed David to present an offering to the Lord at Araunah’s threshing floor. Araunah offered to give David the threshing floor and everything he needed at no cost, but David replied, ”I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which cost me nothing”. David bought the entire property and everything he needed for 600 shekels of gold (1 Chronicles 21:25), which in today’s value is $290 000 (R3.9mil). That is ridiculously expensive. The second account, was the account of the sinful woman in Luke 7 who washed Jesus’ feet with the contents of an alabaster jar and her tears, and finally dried His feet with her hair. Scholars are unsure if this fragrant oil was identical to the one Mary Magdalene used in John 12, but in this case let’s assume that it is. (It’s easy to assume this, as spikenard, the expensive oil Mary used, was transported from India in alabaster jars, the same kind of jar that this lady brought her oil in.) If that’s the case, a jar of spikenard cost 300 denarii – or 300 days worth of work. That’s 10 months of your full salary, before tax. This cost is relative to your own salary but, according to the US Federal Reserve, the average salary in the USA is $54462 (or R736 326) per year, which equates to $45385 (or R613605) for 10 months of that annual salary. That, too, is insanely expensive. When considering the cost of David and the woman’s worship, the Lord asked me this:

"What’s in your jar?"

It hit me, as I mulled over that question, that I don’t love God as He deserves with the things I treasure most in this life. How I lead and love Jess, as my wife, is an act of worship and if I don’t do that in such a way that it costs me my pride, my wants, my everything, then I don’t honour God through it.

My talents – I definitely don’t love God as He deserves with my talents. I can give Him so much more, but my self-confidence says I can’t.

My time – the one thing I defend whole-heartedly. I’m going to be real, I love spending time with Jess, my family and my friends. My primary love language is “Quality Time”. So, you’d think I use my time well. ***insert game shower sound for incorrect answer here*** I am terrible at it. I am lazy and have spent more time on social media than in the Word and in prayer. I said to Jess this morning at breakfast that we have got to manage the time we spend on social media and be cut-throat with it, because not only is it infringing on our own time as a family, it’s infringing on the time we should be spending in the presence of God.

At the moment, there is not much of tremendous value in my jar. My worship and my affections toward God is not as costly as it should be. Sure, I serve on Friday nights at youth and in various other capacities in the life of the Church, which costs Jess and I the ability to hang out with our friends and family on those nights. It also costs us weekends away and being able to go camping. However, I have other very valuable things in my life that I still need to be put in that jar.

It’s going to cost me.

It’s going to be expensive.

Am I ready to do it?

Probably not.

But, man, Jesus is so worth it.

He deserves every ounce of affection I can give Him and more. He requires that I love Him with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind.

No matter what the cost.

I bet if you had to ask David and the sinful woman if they regretted spending the amount they did on the Lord, you would more than likely get a response like this:

“Nope. It was totally worth it. He is totally worth it.”

So, what’s in your jar?

Love, actually...

Love. We think we know what that is. That is, until we get married. Or until we have a child. In fact, our vague notion of love is utterly shattered into pieces when we read Jesus’ words in the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37) to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. But let me not run ahead of myself.

Before I met Jess, I thought I had an idea of what love “felt like”. I was certain I had been in love before – but in all honesty, I hadn’t known that kind of love. The moment I fell in love with Jess, my notion of love was shattered and completely redefined. Then we got married. Marriage is the culmination of love between a man and a woman. It joins them as one unit, under a not-so-easily broken covenant. It’s in this covenant union that their affections are tested, stretched and substantially grown. It takes work to allow your notion of love to be redefined on a daily basis.

I love being married to Jess and I know she loves being married to me. It’s something we both acknowledge on a daily basis. Yes, we can and do irritate each other. I irritate Jess by being so chipper in the morning. She irritates me by not being so chipper in the morning. But our love supersedes our irritation and I’ve learned to serve Jess in the morning by doing all the morning chores, so that she gets a chance to wake up properly. I take what I have and, instead of using it to irritate Jess by trying to cheer her up, I use it to demonstrate my love for her in an act of service. When I finally got that down, pregnancy hormones kicked in and, suddenly, the lack of chipperness extended beyond 20mins in the morning. When I feel insecure, I have to remind myself that Jess is not mad with me and, in that place, press in harder to demonstrate my love for her by using my morning mood to get her breakfast ready. It can be hard but I love serving her in this way. I think that I have a high capacity to love.

Until I read a statement I made on Facebook exactly 2 years ago:

“In doing a study on The Great Commandment "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind", I've come to realise that loving God on this level is so hard. Loving God with our heart attitudes, our very personality and giftings, and our thought life means being utterly consumed by Him in every way. However, God knows this. That's why Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit, even after He died for us. He knew we would need help. Even in our worst and most difficult moments, we have access to Love, to be taught Love on a higher level by the Spirit of Love.”

My capacity to love on a natural/horizontal scale could be defined as pretty high. But in reading this statement, I am reminded of how short I fall from loving God on the scale that He deserves. I put so much effort into loving my wife the way that she deserves but I don’t come close to putting as much effort into loving Jesus the way that He deserves. My capacity to love on a vertical scale needs a lot of work. A lot. And I'm going to need a lot of help. A lot.

Yes, there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. However, just like letting my love for my wife be stretched and tested daily can be hard work, the same must be said for the love I have for Jesus, but on an exponential scale. I cannot allow the love I have for Jess to grow cold (which would happen if I listened to any insecurities that could arise through taking Jess’ morning “chipperlessness” personally), and I absolutely cannot allow my love for Jesus to grow cold either. And that, my dear friends, is going to take some work. Hard work. Truth be told, as my capacity to love Jesus grows, it will directly affect and influence the way I love Jess. In fact, in direct proportion, it will grow my capacity to love Jess in the way that Christ loves the Church.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I want to to rediscover exactly what it is to love God the way He deserves: with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. I hope that I will get to take some of you on that same journey with me, (and hopefully get to share in your journey too) and I pray that together we can be stirred to love the One who loves enough to call us His own, to call us His children. And not just to love Him but to let our capacity to love Him grow to the point where we are, in fact, utterly consumed by Him, using what we have to reveal our deepest affections towards Him.

(Disclaimer: When I say Jess is not chipper in the morning, I DO NOT imply that she is moody. What I mean is that she doesn’t see the bright side of being woken up by an alarm and, although her eyes are open, she is still mostly asleep. Whereas, I am the total opposite. When I get out of bed, I am 95% awake, and happy to be awake, until the first sip of coffee touches my soul.)

Relevance: Concept or Reality?

Earlier today, I watched a movie called “To Save A Life”. It’s a story about a teenager, Jake, whose life is shaken when his childhood friend, Roger (whom he had ditched for the sake of popularity and romance) shoots himself in front of their entire school body. As the story progresses, Jake is invited to Church and eventually gets saved. But now he wrestles with whether his life and even Roger’s life counts. He starts wondering if he hadn’t have ignored Roger through high school, would he have killed himself? Would he still be alive? And how will his death make a difference? Good solid questions which got me thinking.

I’m a youth leader, I play the piano, I sing, I drink coffee, I love music and I love hanging out with my friends and talking to people. But how does that change the world? Sure, I’m a youth leader, so I have a fair amount of influence over the kids in my youth group. But how am I influencing them to be world changers? How am I showing them how to be relevant? Am I going to ask myself in 10 years time, “If I had gone out and done more to be relevant to my friends, my community, my city, would these kids have been released to be more relevant themselves?” I’m already asking myself a similar question. 

I realise now that being relevant will remain a concept if we don’t BE relevant. If it’s not happening, it’s not reality. Just like if Peter had not stepped off the edge of the boat to walk on water with Jesus, the idea of us, as saints, walking on water would always be just that: an idea. A concept. A notion. But because Peter stepped off the boat, we know it to be reality. If a local Church stays behind its 4 walls every Sunday and doesn’t get onto the streets where all the broken, lost and hurting people are, relevance is a notion. But when they step out of the boat, and faithfully serve the needs of the community, they become relevant.

Here is the Truth:

Isaiah 61:1

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound...”

Now, this prophecy was about Jesus. Isaiah prophesied the relevance of Christ to mankind. It’s as Jesus said, when the Pharisee’s questioned Him keeping company with sinners in Matthew 9:12, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus came because man was (and still is) in need of some serious salvation. So He took the beating, died and rose again for us. Because we needed it. Jesus was, and still is, relevant to humanity. However, he has given us the mandate that He was given in Isaiah 61. It’s now our turn to be relevant to humanity and show them how relevant Jesus is to them. It’s time for us to get out onto the streets and comfort those who mourn, feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are naked, heal those who are sick, liberate those who are oppressed and defend those who are defenseless. If we, as the Church, stand by while these things continue, we have no understanding of our mandate or the Character and Love of God. The River of Life flows in the heart of the Church, so it is our task to redirect the flow of those Living Waters into dormant streams and dried up lakes.

How are we calling forth Life in our communities? How are you participating in that? 

Today, do not feel condemned or irrelevant. But rather, ask God to give you a deeper revelation of His love for the unsaved and unloved, the hungry and homeless, the abused and defenseless. Ask Him to give you His love for those people, for if you have not love, you become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13). Ask Him to show you how you can be more relevant within your local Church and community. 

I pray that God, our Father, will stir up His love and the deep wells of the River of Life in you, so that you as the Church can be relevant in your context, as Jesus was relevant to humanity in its entirety. I pray that you will have the faith to step out of the boat and be the World Changer you were created to be. Finally, I pray that the Holy Spirit will envelope you in power and strength to accomplish everything that God has set out and pre-ordained for you to do. 

It’s up to you choose whether your relevance will be a concept or reality.

The Conquering Saviour Series - Part 3

Conqueror of Kings and Darkness

Revelation 19:11-16

“Now I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed in robe dipped in blood, and His name is called the Word of God. And the armies of Heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”

I can still never get enough of this description of Jesus. It rocks the very core of me and tears down any man made image of Jesus that is placed in my mind. This is a description of a King who fights for justice. Not for rights to vast amounts of oil, power and money. It’s the description of a King who fights for the people He created for Himself. Some may wonder why He hadn’t done this before the world went sour. You want the Truth? Here it is:

He’s been fighting for His people since the moment Adam and Eve fell in Eden.

I’m reminded of the account of three young Jewish men in the Old Testament: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. (Daniel 3) Israel had been captured by the Babylonians under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. These three young men had found favour in the eyes of the Babylonian king. However this changed when they refused to bow down to the image of the king. Not because they were at all rebellious but because they refused to compromise their faith in God and bow down to a false god. This infuriated the king and he ordered the furnace be heated seven times it’s normal heat and the three men bound and thrown into it. The furnace was so hot that even the men who were throwing the bound men into it were consumed by the flames and killed.

You would probably think that at this point the three young men are also dead and that’s the end of the story. Actually, at this point the king was astonished because not only were they alive and walking around unharmed in the fire but there was a fourth man walking with them, who the king described as “the form of the fourth is like the Son of God”. This account took place a good few centuries before the birth of Jesus, so this fourth Man, must’ve been pretty glorious and indescribable for an unbelieving king who, along with the rest of the world, has not seen the Son of God. This fourth Man brought a king, who forced men to worship him, to his knees and began to declare the praises of the Most High God.

Here is Jesus, bringing the most powerful king in the world to his knees for the sake of His people.

Then there’s the matter of the Cross. There was no physical king on the planet, who being defeated, could separate man from the clutches of sin and darkness. Sin and Darkness itself needed to be conquered and the only man who had the ability to do that was the fourth Man in the furnace. The only man with the Heavenly Authority to make an exchange for man’s righteousness. The deal was this:

Jesus’ had to die on the cross in exchange for the righteousness of every man, woman and child.

I’m sure satan was quite chuffed with himself. He thought he had backed God into a corner forcing him to die the most dreadful death in order for His people to be free and sin removed, if they chose to believe. The only problem is that, satan didn’t realise that the removal of sin meant the removal of death, and the removal of death meant Jesus could rise victorious over sin and darkness. The transaction was fair, Jesus just knew that the removal of the cause would also mean the removal of the result.

Jesus’ death caused the self -proclaimed king of darkness to be brought to his knees and be conquered. As believers we are no longer under the rule of darkness. We walk around in the flames of despair, death and sin but we are unscathed, unburned, because the Son of God walks with us. The king of darkness still tries to win us back but every time we proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we remind that defeated foe that our Saviour - Jesus - is a conquering Saviour, the fourth Man in the furnace, who fought for the freedom of His people for 4000 years, and won. That same Man, will return as Revelation 19 says He will, and will end the existence of the kingdom of darkness in order for every man, woman and child to be utterly free from even tempation, and for the Kingdom of Heaven to be restored to Earth, all for the Glory of our Most High God. And in that place, we will worship Him:

The Lion of Judah

The Lamb of God

King of Kings

Lord of Lords

Prince of Peace

Son of God.

Jesus - our Conquering Saviour

If you’re reading this today and recognise the need for a Saviour, the need for forgiveness, I ask that you pray this prayer and be welcomed into redemption. Into the arms of Jesus.

Lord Jesus, I thank You that you died for me, so that I could be raised to Life again with You. Today, I put my faith in You as Saviour, Redeemer, Father and Friend. Thank You that Your blood was enough to wash me clean of sin forever so that I may have relationship with you as my Father and trust You as Daddy. I put my life in Your loving and gracious hands today Father, and ask that You would lead me into everything You have for me, as Your son/daughter. Amen.

If you prayed that prayer and would like to tell someone, please I encourage you to email me on dwaine.hohne@telkomsa.net so that I can give you something more to read, or you can tell a friend who you know to be a Christian. It is an absolute joy to me and to the host of Heaven today, if you did pray that prayer. But more so, Jesus is glad you’re back where you belong...with Him.