encouragement – Page 5 – MY CONVICTIONS

So this wasn’t what I planned to talk about this week, but life happens and sometimes God presses on your heart and you have to listen and respond with a YES. A lot happened this week, I had a scare with my mum which as you can imagine wasn’t fun, although we know that we are not immortals and death is guaranteed, it still doesn’t make it any easier to deal with! I am happy to report that my mum is alive and well, praise Jesus! But this led to an interesting conversation with my mum about her salvation! As you know I haven’t been on my faith journey for long, and I am still a new Christian compared to some, but my mum sincerely accepted Christ this year through faith and faith alone! Let me give you a little back story.

I have a close relationship with my mum, we talk practically everyday, we have a great friendship! So during my coming to Christ my mum knew everything, she was very supportive and encouraging! Through me God was reaching out to her, he was transforming her and she didn’t even realise! My mum had always believed you had to be perfect to come to Christ (this was bad teaching she experienced in her life having a brief encounter with Jehovah Witnesses) it was this belief that kept her away from God! She felt unworthy, and I remember her always saying “I need to get my life together first.” God used me to show her that He wanted her as she was, and that nobody would ever be perfect! As we all know covid happened, so a lot of plans had to get put on a shelf as the whole world shut down. I had initially hoped to get baptised in 2020 but that wasn’t possible so I put that on hold along with the rest of my life, I just used that time to continue to learn about Jesus and the goodness of God, sharing everything with my mum. During that time I prayed for her, asking God to soften her heart and to help her come to know Him!

God’s timing is always perfect! There is a good reason why I didn’t get baptised in 2020, God was still doing work in my mum! I got baptised in June 2021, and the week leading up to my baptism I prayed like I had never prayed before! I was going through my own feelings of unworthiness, the enemy was desperate, he was doing everything to sway me from my decision! That week I asked God to do something big on the day of my baptism, something so big that I couldn’t deny it was Him moving! When I think back on that time I laugh at the audacity and boldness I had to challenge my Father in that way, but My God is loving, full of grace and mercy, He understood my heart and what I needed at that time, and our God always gives us what we need! Jesus told his disciples “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) so that’s exactly what I was doing, I was believing with my whole heart that something would happen on that day! When the day of my baptism arrived I was excited, nervous, happy that my mum and brother were gonna be there to experience an important day of my new life. That morning as I was writing my testimony in preparation, my phone rang, I looked and saw my mum’s name on the screen, my first thought was she was calling to say she wouldn’t be able to make it (she suffers with arthritis, so sometimes she isn’t mobile) I answered the phone and she was tearful and emotional, of course I was worried thinking something had happened! I asked what was wrong? and her words were ” I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I woke up emotional and in tears, I am gonna bring extra clothes with me!” of course I was confused, and asked what did she mean bring extra clothes?! that’s when she said “I wanna get baptised!” I think that’s the first time I was truly overwhelmed and speechless! I told my mum YES!! God had answered my prayer, He had done something so big that I couldn’t deny him! That day me and my mum got baptised together! A day I will never forget! There is so much more I can say about what happened on that day but that isn’t the point of this post, I am showing you how she believed through faith, nothing more than pure faith! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “GOD SAVED YOU BY HIS GRACE WHEN YOU BELIEVED. AND YOU CAN’T TAKE CREDIT FOR THIS; IT IS A GIFT FROM GOD. SALVATION IS NOT A REWARD FOR THE GOOD THINGS WE HAVE DONE, SO NONE OF US CAN BOAST ABOUT IT.”

I remember sharing that verse with her before she got baptised, and I believe she truly received it because she came to Christ in confidence that no matter what she was doing with her life, God still wanted her! This kind of reminds me of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9) I really encourage you to read it if you haven’t before, but a basic summary of it is about how the Word affects us, whether it sticks to us, or it is snatched away from us (this is a very basic summary lol) My mum had forgotten that she was saved by grace, she had reverted back to her old way of thinking! So when her mortality was challenged this week and she considered life and death she believed that she wasn’t saved because she wasn’t doing any “works”, she hadn’t attended church for a couple of weeks and she wasn’t picking up her bible, she even admitted that she was having what I like to call “imposter syndrome” where you feel like you don’t belong. That’s when I realised the word had fallen on the surface, it had not taken root!

The thing we need to understand about this walk of faith is the adversary is very real! When we choose Christ and become children of God, he hates it! He starts to throw everything at us to break our spirit! He lies to us and tells us we are not worthy and God doesn’t want us! He is so desperate to corrupt our hearts and have us back in a life of sin, a life of death! We start to feel so under attack it can become very easy for us to reconsider the narrow road and exchange it for the wider more treaded path! But think of it this way, if you had thirty more years guaranteed on this earth, but after the thirty years are up you have eternity to contend with, what would be more important to you? thirty years or eternity? Would you trade your eternity with Jesus at the throne for thirty short years of a somewhat comfortable life? I know what I’m choosing! An eternity without Jesus is something I don’t even wanna think about! The Bible warns us of all of this, God show’s us in many ways the kind of afflictions we can be subjected to as Christians, but the great thing about the Bible is it tells us how to overcome it all! We just have to pick it up and read it! EPHESIANS 6:11 “PUT ON THE FULL ARMOUR OF GOD, SO THAT YOU CAN TAKE YOUR STAND AGAINST THE DEVIL’S SCHEMES.”

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, it is a spiritual one, against the powers of this dark world and the forces of evil! I know that may sound like a movie and the reality of it can invoke fear, but we have nothing to fear if we turn up to the battle fully equipped! God gives us the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit (which is the word of God) all while our feet our fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace! We have everything we need to slay our enemy, we are capable, we have the authority in the mighty name of JESUS! The enemy doesn’t want us to know this so he keeps us distracted so that we don’t arm ourselves the way God intended us by picking up our bibles! The enemy lies to us and makes us think we have no power, this is what keeps us in bondage!

The thing is we are all on our own journey’s, and they may all look a little different! We all arrive at our own revelation at some point, and that is ok because that is what shapes us, God uses it all to give Him the glory! But these are the last days, so please do not be asleep and miss our Lord all because you wasn’t prepared! You believed and received so you are saved! But that is only the start of your journey! God is calling you to seek Him, He wants to do so much in your life, He chose YOU! He knew you before He sent you into your mother’s womb! He loved you from then! That is a long time to love someone! And through it all, even when you were not perfect, and even now when you knowingly do what you shouldn’t He never stopped wanting you, His hand was always outstretched to you! When you start to move, when you put that faith that caused you to believe into action, watch Him move mountains in your life! You will start to experience Him like you could never imagine! Get to know Him, pick up your bible and discover how good He is! Whatever the enemy is throwing at you right now, trust and believe it is only for a short time, once you start to learn your true identity in Christ, you will have the power to overcome and the enemy has no other choice but to flee! I say this all with my mum in mind but this is for anyone who may be feeling weighed down! God is calling you! But will you answer?…..

First let me start off by saying Christians are not perfect. Did you catch that? Let me say it again for the people in the back, CHRISTIANS ARE NOT PERFECT! Ok now I’ve got that out of the way I can move on. That took me a while to grasp myself, for a long time I assumed Christians were meant to be perfect people, holding themselves to a standard that us mere mortals could never achieve! I thought “CHURCH” was this building where all these perfect people came together to praise God and look down on all the unsaved people who weren’t apart of this members only club! When that is your view of church, it doesn’t sound that appealing does it? So it’s no surprise that I never saw myself as a church goer. I can count the times I stepped foot in a church in my life on one hand (before I came to Christ) Like I said before I had urges to know God, but unfortunately the one time in my adult life I found myself attending a service, I left feeling unmoved. I remember feeling that everyone was fake and the only thing that seemed to matter to these people was who was wearing what! I never expected church to feel like a fashion show, or a parade of wealth that didn’t seem to give any glory to God! Nobody seemed particularly welcoming and I left feeling like church was full of hypocrites! Imagine Monday through to Saturday your neighbour Mary or John from up the street supposedly being Christians, but nothing about their daily lives reflected a Christ like nature, they weren’t loving to their neighbours, they gossiped about everyone, they only helped themselves, but come Sunday morning they were the first arrivals at service?! When your expectations of church involve the word “perfect” when you meet the John’s and Mary’s you can’t help but feel the idea of church is pointless and not worth getting up for. That’s definitely how I felt about it, I was one of those people that said “I don’t need to go to church to praise God, I can do it from my home” But I didn’t say that because I really knew what I was talking about, remember I had no biblical knowledge at that point, I just used it as a way to validate my reasons for not getting up early, and I found other people just as clueless as myself to strengthen my opinions, talk about the blind leading the blind!

So imagine my surprise when two months into confessing my allegiance to Jesus that I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to find a church! At first I tried to ignore that pull, but you can not ignore God, which I learned very quickly! The more I continued with my Bible study the more I was convicted that I NEEDED a church! Ultimately what I was really craving was a sense of community. My coming to Christ wasn’t your typical story, I had built relationships with fellow believers that lived overseas! It was ok when it came to the odd Whatsapp call or message but I still felt lonely and isolated. Having friends but feeling lonely is a trip! All my friends I had here were not religious, or not believers. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THEREFORE, IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THE NEW CREATION HAS COME: THE OLD HAS GONE, THE NEW IS HERE!” When you accept Christ and allow the change that comes with it, it’s impossible to stay the same person! You naturally start to feel the need to be around people who have the same core beliefs and things in common (That’s another blog post cause we need to discuss how hard those changes can be)

People make up a community, people make up a church, church is community! Church wasn’t designed to be just something you “Do” on a Sunday, church wasn’t meant to be something you do in a list of things, which really is just you doing works to secure a place in heaven, to avoid eternal damnation. How many Christians have you come across that actually believe if you don’t go to church that means you are not saved? I’ve heard people say that they have been told this! These same people who are quick to tell you about your salvation might feel righteous because they attend church every Sunday but all week they live in the spirit of unforgiveness and pride, but you’re the one with a salvation problem! The minds of some baffle me! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “FOR IT IS BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED, THROUGH FAITH- AND THIS IS NOT FROM YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD- NOT BY WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.” So now we know that your attendance at church is not dependant on your salvation, lets talk about why we should go to church.

God didn’t create us to be lone ranger Christians! Our Triune God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, designed us to be in relationship with Him and others! It’s no coincidence that the whole Bible or law is summed up to this, love your neighbour as yourself! (GALATIANS 5:14) When Covid hit in 2020 and lockdowns were implemented, I felt the church was truly tested, churches had never closed their doors before and we were tasked to think outside the box so that we could still find ways to do community worship. I realised then that church was more than a building, here I was watching online services on a Sunday from the comforts of my bedroom, technically in attendance but the feeling was definitely different. Congregations gathered in outdoor spaces, like public parks in some countries, they had their whole services like this, not enclosed in brick and mortar but they were still a church! What made the church was the congregation! The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of that body! The body is made up of believers of Christ, and Christ is the head, the One that leads us! (EPHESIANS 1:22-23)

Think about YOUR body, every part of your body is functional and has a purpose, some parts would have more impact on your life if they were to stop working than others but every part is just as important! Now if we transfer that analogy to the body of believers that make up the church, the body of Christ, that should tell us that we have a responsibility to be more than just church attendees, we all have a role to play, and its not exclusively just for the pastors, church leaders and worship teams! As believers we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, He distributes gifts to us, and we are called to use these gifts, whether it be the gift of healing, wisdom, words of encouragement to build faith, knowledge, or prophecy to name a few, we are called to use them to edify the church, and these same gifts help us to share the Gospel! So our presence when we attend church should be felt, we should be active members within our churches, and when I say active I mean taking part in fellowship with each other, reaching out to other members, building relationships. If we all operated in this way, when someone new shows up on a Sunday, we would naturally make them feel welcomed, showing them what church is really about, giving them a feel of what community is meant to be, now church becomes something you look forward to, not something you numbly experience.

Life is hard, but life is even harder when you accept Christ! So why would you want to do it alone? We need a community of believers who we can come to for wisdom, counselling, encouragement, knowledge, a place where we can communally worship and honour God and really sit in his presence, not like we can’t sit in His presence on our own but there is something powerful about being in a group of people all calling out to God and praising his name, it really changes the atmosphere of the room! This world is designed to lead us astray, to make us question our faith, it’s very easy to let culture infiltrate the standards that God expects us to hold true, we start to compromise ourselves, then instead of walking like Christ, we start to live like everyone else and the light that Jesus called us to be starts to dim, our views start to become worldly and worldliness is just the absence of God! Once we start down that slippery path it becomes very easy for us to fall away from the faith, because the moral of the story is we need a community, we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep us on this narrow road which is not easy to tread! This is why WE NEED CHURCH!

Like I said before we are not perfect, the bible tells us in 1 JOHN 1:8 “IF WE CLAIM TO BE WITHOUT SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.” So bare that in mind when dealing with your fellow brothers and sisters. I know there is a lot of church hurt out there, and there is a lot of unsavoury stories when it comes to the history of some churches, but to me that is just confirmation that perfection doesn’t exist, only Jesus can hold that title! I urge you to find your community, it makes such a difference to your walk. Since I found my Church it has really become a family to me, don’t be mistaken, I prayed over finding a good church, every time I went, my prayer was always for God to plant my feet firmly at my church if this was where He called me to be! I listened intently to the word given and made sure it was God’s word (the importance of Christians knowing their word is also another blog post I need to explore) In no time God ushered me into my church and I am now a part of my worship team, even a few weeks ago I had the privilege of giving my first sermon/word of encouragement, which still baffles me to this day! God has really been present in my life and he is definitely present in my church! I have grown so much more in my faith because of my church, I definitely wouldn’t have experienced the growth I have without it! We need Church like the sick need the hospital, we can bandage ourselves to a certain degree at home with our first aid kits but if we want true healing we need our doctors, and hospitals are where we find them, we need our check ups from our GP’s! So think of the church like going to see our GP for a weekly check up, or think of Church like going to hospital because we are sick and need heart surgery, and our surgeon is King Jesus! Just like we can’t do without hospitals, in that same way know we can’t do without churches!

Tag: encouragement

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