When the Bible speaks of a ‘house’, it is not just referring to the buildings we live in. Our ‘house’ describes everything about us; our family, goals, direction, motivations and history. Joshua made the statement, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’. Josh 24:15. Joshua was second in charge to Moses and took over the leadership of Israel when Moses died. We read in Judges that ‘the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua’. Judg 2:7. After Moses died, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for their elders, heads of houses, judges and officers. He reminded them that their fathers in ancient times had lived beyond the River and had served other gods. 

When we consider the work of redemption, we firstly think of the blood of Christ. We understand that His blood redeems us from sin. It is interesting to note, however, that sin is not the first emphasis of redemption. Sin is not the all-encompassing preoccupation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It has been dealt with once and for all and will not mar the new heavens and new earth. The Eternal Covenant between Father, Son and Holy Spirit involves much more than redemption from sin.

We all make vows and commitments every day. But instead of making vows, we say, ‘I am going to do this or that’. When we come to Christ we are making a commitment. The psalmist said, ‘Make vows to the Lord your God and fulfil them’. Psa 76:11. Some may suggest that we no longer need to make vows because we are not under the law. However, the making of vows predates the law covenant. I would suggest that vows are part of the Everlasting Covenant and are still relevant to us today. 

The believers in the early church were of one mind and continually devoted themselves to prayer. Acts 1:14. The apostle Paul told the Philippians that he was ‘always offering prayer’. Phil 1:4. He likewise exhorted them to ‘be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.’ Phil 4:6. Paul’s faith was clear. ‘My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory’. Phil 4:19. Prayer connects us with a God who does everything abundantly.

I have observed that King David, the great psalmist, constantly talked about his soul. He wrote concerning the Lord, ‘He restores my soul’. Psa 23:3. He also recognised, ‘My enemy has persecuted my soul’. Psa 143:3. The literal translation of this verse means, ‘My enemy has pursued my soul’. And the outcome for David was devastating. To say an enemy has ‘pursued my soul’ is not language that we use today. You are more likely to come home from work and say, ‘They attacked me’ or ‘I feel under threat’. Nevertheless, the imperative to keep watch over your soul is the same as it was for the great psalmist. 

In his letter to the Romans, Paul said that ‘God has allotted to each a measure of faith’. Rom 12:3. I am reminded of something I recently read in a book. It was based on the concept of auto-suggestion which involves using visualisation to make something happen. The author proposes that if we keep visualising and thinking about what we desire, it will come to pass. There are many people who practise this kind of ‘faith’. However, I define faith as the ability of Christ within us to do the will of God.

The nature of faith is easily misunderstood. For many Christians, faith is nothing more than the product of positive thinking. For some, it is that sense of certainty that accompanies success, as if to imply that when things are going well, they must be ‘in faith’. For others, faith is holding dogmatically to the literal promises of the Bible. However, in reality, faith has very little to do with things that impact upon our senses. Faith comes by hearing. It comes by a word of faith. 

How do the Father, Son and Holy Spirit work and live? It is an interesting question to reflect on. The apostle Paul’s statement to the Philippian church, concerning their participation in the fellowship of giving and receiving, gives us a clue. ‘You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone.’ Phil 4:15. Paul was saying to the Philippians that they had caught his ethos of giving and receiving. They recognized the motivation of a true Christian community is to live as God Himself lives.

The Scriptures continually speak about the importance of prayer and how we should pray. Paul says, ‘I desire therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting’. 1 Tim 2:8. Remember that Paul described himself as a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’. When he spoke of lifting up holy hands, he was effectively quoting from the words of the great psalmist. ‘May my prayer be counted as incense before You; the lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.’ Psa 141:2. 

Recently when I was praying, a picture came to me of new sprouts. I saw seeds sprouting and new growth, like the winter was ending and the spring was coming. There had been some rain followed by sunshine and then humidity. All of a sudden there was fresh growth. In my spirit, I had the sense of fruitfulness and multiplication. The Lord was commanding a blessing!

One of my favourite passages from Scripture is, ‘For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose hearts are completely His’. 2 Chron 16:9. I remember how powerfully it impacted upon me as I began to realise that God was for me. If you have a victim mentality or if you feel that life is somehow against you, then you need to rethink. This is not what the gospel teaches, and it is not the Christian life. God is proactively for you. However, we note in this verse that God is searching. He is not supporting just anyone. He is seeking to support those whose hearts are fully His. 

The theme of the ‘anointing oil’ is rich with symbolism and has much to teach us. The psalmist proclaimed, ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head’. Ps 133:2. He was speaking of the ‘anointing oil’ that was poured over the head of the high priest when he was ordained for the Lord’s service. The Scriptures describe this oil as pure olive oil mixed with four spices. Ex 30:23-25. It was the work of a perfumer, and hence it was known as the ‘oil of the apothecary’.

In many parts of the world, Christians are experiencing severe persecution. In our western society, we are largely shielded from this. However, as we approach the time of the end, we can expect this tribulation to increase. Paul encouraged all the early churches by saying, ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God’. Acts 14:22. I want to encourage you to lift up your eyes in prayer to behold what God is doing in the whole world. I am inclined, like many people, to live in an isolated and incubated world where my life is mostly about the things that are happening around me. My constant wrestle in prayer is to lift up my eyes to see what God is doing. It is vitally important that we learn to ‘lift our eyes to the hills from where our help comes’. Psa 121:1. By looking to the Lord, we will gain perspective. We will see things in the broader spectrum of our lives that are not easily seen. 

It is very sad when good people become victims of their own stubbornness. They are prepared to accept the consequences of calamity, rather than humbling themselves. We ought to keep our heart with all diligence. This is easy to say, but not easy to do; particularly when things are not going well for us.

At any given time, many people will be experiencing affliction. We need to remember that it’s ‘not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord of hosts’. Zec 4:6. These are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will make us sufficient. I commend to you the thought that ‘all sufficiency’ comes through the crushing of the grape, the olive and the sweet spices of the incense. Sweet incense is the composite of all of those sweet spices. They were crushed and blended, and fire was added to produce the sweet aroma of life. By this means, we are the fragrance of Christ. 

Over the years, I have read a vast amount of motivational and leadership material. My bookshelves are filled with the anecdotes of successful men and women in areas such as sport and business. Certainly, many helpful ideas on mentoring, motivating and leading people can be found in their writings. However, there is one vital principle that is missing. I believe it is our ‘failures’ that define us, not our successes. The gospel is not simply about ‘life’. It is about ‘life out of death’. We’ll recall the words of Nehemiah, ‘The God of heaven will give us success’. Neh 2:20. When we join the dying of our Lord Jesus, God makes us alive together with Him. That is the essential tenet of any ‘success formula’.

I have been reflecting on the beginning of the twentythird Psalm. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ Psa 23:1. David was a man who believed the Lord would supply all his needs. He could say with confidence, ‘I shall not want’. If you reflect on your life, do you have that faith? Is that your testimony? It can be quite a journey to reach this kind of faith. At times, we all struggle with the fear of lack. We easily become worried or anxious about our basic needs. This type of anxiety has the capacity to grip the heart of every person. Why is this? We all have to negotiate anxiety for provision because the Lord has broken the ‘staff of bread’. This is an interesting theme in the Scriptures. 

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been considering the last days of Jesus’ life. Following His death, those who loved Him brought spices to the tomb. They came to anoint the body of their Lord. All these spices used to create sweet incense, are Hebrew symbols of prayer. We’ll recall that Mary Magdalene was the one who loved much because she had been forgiven much. The Scriptures say that she went out to the tomb ‘while it was still dark’. John 20:1. I think she learnt that from the Master. He regularly rose early, long before the sun came up, and went out to a solitary place to pray.

If you desire to be a genuine and fervent seeker of the Lord, you will need to pray in the secret place. And more than this, you will need to maintain a devotional journal. Many Christians, who have been doing this over many years, could testify of this truth. A devotional journal is an essential tool in helping us understand the will of God. I’ve been inspired for some time on a little passage about King David. He said, concerning the tabernacle and his own life, ‘All this … the Lord made me understand in writing by His hand upon me’. 1 Chron 28:19. 

I want to encourage you to become a seeker. For many years, Christians have used the term ‘seeker’ to mean someone new to the gospel or someone not yet committed to Christ. However, I would call that an ‘enquirer’, rather than a ‘seeker’. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is telling us all to be seekers. The Father is seeking for sons. He is seeking for us, just as He is asking us to seek Him. He wants to bless us and give us the substance of our sonship. We can have confidence in His promise that if we ask of Him, we will receive. ‘Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you’. Matt 7:7.

The term ‘lamp’ can have many different meanings depending on the context in which we hear it. Typically though, we could say that a lamp is something that has the potential to shine. By this definition, each one of us is a lamp. We are vessels with the potential to shine. In today’s society, when we think of a light, we tend to think of something that’s run by electricity. Of course, this has not always been the case. Rather than using electricity, the lamp of the Bible was a vessel containing oil, and fire ignited this oil. 

When we speak of darkness and light, it sounds like a contradiction. We know that Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the ‘Light of the world’. John 8:12. What then is the place of darkness? We all know that sense of walking in darkness during difficult and painful times in our life. Sometimes the situations that we find ourselves in seem hopeless, and we cannot see the way ahead. We wonder what we have done to cause it.

In one of the most well known passages of Scripture, the psalmist rejoiced, ‘My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life’. Psa 23:5-6. The goodness of God was following him. This can be our testimony, for God has ordained goodness for us in this life. We likewise read in the psalms, ‘How great is Your goodness which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you have wrought for those who take refuge in you before the sons of men’. Psa 31:19. 

We would all be familiar with the saying, ‘Use it or lose it’! We hear this said, particularly with respect to our physical bodies as we grow older. However, it holds no less import for our spiritual well-being. It has far greater importance. As time passes, our physical bodies become less able, but our spiritual vigour can increase right to the end of our lives. When our knees and shoulders begin to fail, we can still be ‘renewed in the spirit of our mind’. Eph 4:23.

The Scriptures speak to us about the secret place and the secret things of God. The secret place is where we take refuge, and where we learn of the hidden things of God. ‘The secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed belong to us and our sons forever’. Deut 29:29. We set our hearts to possess the things revealed. But more so, we desire to apprehend the secret things of the Lord. 

Reflect for yourself and ask the question: Have you lost sight of your way? Is your life governed by your instinctive responses? It is imperative that we understand ourselves and our impact on life. It is fascinating to canvass our society and observe well known men and women. Who has understanding of themselves? Conversely, it is intriguing to observe people who evidently don't understand themselves.