Our High Priest (3)

"Let us therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."                                       Hebrews 4:16    NKJV 

Two words from our text are prominent here, Mercy, which in the Greek is a word called Hesed. This means unfailing love, kindness and tenderness. The other is Grace, which is God's unmerited favour. Mercy says, 'He doesn't give us what we deserve' and Grace says 'He gives us what we do not deserve'. There is a big difference here, one in which we need to meditate on and praise Him for His kindness towards us.

Therefore armed with this knowledge, we can have the confidence to approach the throne of grace in our time of need; and praying is how we do this. Every time we pray to God, we are literally approaching the throne of grace. Satan would like us to feel that God is unapproachable. He will do what he can to prevent us from being confident enough to pray and approach Gods throne. Perhaps you can remember when there have been times in your life when you could not pray. These were the times when things had gone wrong and you felt a million miles away from God and, definitely did not have the confidence to pray. If this happens again, have confidence and break though this barrier.

At these times, God it seems is shouting, 'Don't stay away, come and pray, come receive what you need.' If you don't feel God does things such as this, remember the struggle you had with this. Part of you wanted to pray (this was God drawing you near to Him); on the other side of the coin, you didn't feel worthy enough, you felt you had let God down too much, (this was the devil persuading you not to pray because you are so unworthy.) When this happens, there is a struggle going on, you are being pulled both ways. Do yourself a favour and go the way that you know is right. You know God loves you; you know He will forgive you and, you know who doesn't want you to pray. So approach the throne of grace, immediately.

God wants you to have confidence. When you walk in confidence, you can boldly make Godly decisions throughout the day without faltering. You have the confidence to boldly approach God's throne and speak with your High Priest - Jesus. Keep this confidence alive by spending each day with Jesus.

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Our High Priest (2)

"For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin"                     Hebrews 4:15    NKJV 

Jesus knows exactly how it feels to be human in every aspect. Therefore, He is able to sympathise with our weaknesses. Sympathise means 'to suffer with' and expresses the feeling of one who has entered into suffering. His desire is to guide us through our troubles in a way that brings Him Glory but blesses us too and helps us on the road to being ambassadors for the Kingdom of God.

Note the word 'weaknesses' that is written in our verse.. This type of weakness is desiring something so much, that you just cannot resist it. This involves a person's thought life - mental weakness. The more you dwell on something, allowing your mind to fantasise about it, the more temptation becomes greater and then it is very difficult to be able to control this. This weakness may come from unsatisfied longing, something James mentions in his Epistle:

'But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.'

                                                                                                  James 1:14-15  NKJV

There is a serious need to take charge of our thought life; we look at something and our mind can process this in a sinful manner so much, that before long this is all that we think about. If we allow our desire to manifest, we can then be hooked into this. Jesus knows how this works and sympathises with us, He has been there but, never sinned once. Just the fact that He has been there gives us the benefit of first rate help when we call on Him. 

Just because sinful thoughts come into our minds, this does not mean that we have sinned. On the contrary, we can find it hard to stop the thought but, we can control the outcome. If we give this thought to Jesus - capturing it  (2 Corinthians 10:1-6), He will help us through it. This is approaching the Throne of Grace, as we will discuss tomorrow.

Our High Priest loves and cares for us, and as we involve ourselves, deeper in Him, He becomes deeper in us.

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Our High Priest (1)

"Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession".        Hebrews 4:14    NKJV 

We need to move forward with Jesus, our Great High Priest. Thank about it for a moment, no other High Priest as these attributes:

(1)  No other High Priest was called great

(2)  No other High Priest passed through the heavens

(3)  No other High Priest is the Son of God

(4)  No other High Priest would offer to die in your place

(5)  No other High Priest would allow you to walk, confidently to the Throne of God

He passed through the heavens and he ascended into heaven and remains at the Father's side ministering for our sakes. Both these truths should encourage us to hold fast our confession. But, let's not forget He was in heaven in the first place. He was the creating force that brought everything into place. Nothing was created without Him. 'All things were made through Him and without Him, nothing was made, that was made'  John 1:3.

He created you and I and He takes an interest in all we have and do. Jesus is our brother; He is our Saviour and God and, He is our Great High Priest. He has been and is, faithful to us and therefore we should never be any different to Him.

If we say that we belong to Jesus, we need to hold fast to this confession. We need to be faithful to Him as He is to us. We need to live the life. For Him, there is no one greater than us; we are His special people. He took our place; He took our sins and He died for us thus redeeming us from a terrible destination. There is no one greater than our Great High Priest. He is very special!

Copyright 2021 Grahame Howard.                                 

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Struggling with fear

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind."    

                                                                                                         2 Timothy 1:7   NKJV 

Timothy struggled with a spirit of fear which may have been the result of his personality, persecutions and burdens he carried. He may also have been unsure of his abilities to serve.

Fear is something we all suffer from time to time. It may be fleeting or, it may last longer.

Fear is a normal, natural response to a danger in our surroundings and situations. It intends to keep us from fulfilling the destiny that God has given us. It may also prevent us from living a joy-filled, spirit led existence.

Our fears can be grouped into areas such as, sickness or failure; poverty; criticism; losing loved ones; old age and the consequences of this and then, the fear of death. However, there may be other areas of fear. Psychologists and the medical world, have stated that stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. The blood pressure and the heart rate increase and we breathe faster. Even the blood flow may change. It is dangerous to fear and get ourselves all upset over something that may never happen.

How can we address our fear? Charles F Stanley gives a favourable comment regarding this:

'Fear focuses our attention on ourselves and on things we do not need to consider. It fills our minds with hypothetical situations that all end in defeat and ruination. Eventually, it utterly consumes us. When you feel gripped by fear, turn your gaze to Jesus, re-direct your heart to His love, speak to your fear from the Word of God and, then respond boldly to the situation. The Lord's desire is for you to 'Be strong and very courageous', today!  Josh 1:7'

Bob Gass used a great acronym concerning the word 'Fear. FALSE, EVIDENCE, APPEARING, REAL'. Just think about that. Fear cause our minds to concentrate on hypothetical things. It is usually false stuff that we are convinced is real and it causes us to lose our joy - which is our strength; and it causes us to doubt the only one who is 100% true - Jesus. 

Jesus said, 'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me.' Has Jesus ever lied to you? Of course He hasn't. However, the devil has. How long are you going to allow him to ransack your life and testimony?

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Controlling anger (3)

"Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord." v24-25                          Romans 7:14-25   NLT 

Our anger can bring us to the depth of total guilt and shame and we can have a temptation to give up - 'What's the point, I've blown it now?' It is an overbearing feeling and one, in which the Apostle Paul knew all about. Ask yourself one question, 'Did I think I would be excempt a spiritual attack?’ Because this is what it is. People may think bad of you, but what does God think? What do you think? 

Paul had this struggle too and questioned himself throughly about his sin. He came to the conclusion that the trouble was with him (v14-15) - 'for I am all too human - a slave to sin.' I want to do what is right but I don't do it. Instead I do what I hate'. (v18-19) 'I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong but, I do it anyway.' v24-25 'Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 'Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.'

Does this sound familiar to you? Of course it does, we all do this and it is encouraging to realise that, a man as bold and fearless as Paul could have these feeling as well. It's good to know this and shows that we are normal.

Tony Evans comments:

'Paul had the same struggles we do. We've all said, "I don't understand what I am doing. What is wrong with me?" We agree we do what is wrong, we just can't break free from it. The more closer you are to God, the more you are aware of it. The problem is, our old self was crucified with Christ, the flesh wasn't. Our sinful nature was put to death but our flesh remains active. You are totally sanctified in Christ - redeemed, totally brand new but, you live in a body contaminated by flesh. Therefore, when we sin, we are no longer the one's doing it, it is the sin that lives in us (7:20). Paul is not excusing our sin, he is reminding us that our true identity is no longer found in our actions, even if we keep sinning.'

                                                               Tony Evans Bible Commentary

So there we have it. You are normal, you will be exposed and fall to sin because your flesh is not free like your spirit is. But this doesn't mean we just get on with it and and just accept this. No, we need to do all we can to attempt, as much as we can, to live sin free lives. It can be accomplished if we stay close to Jesus.

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Controlling anger (2)

"But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.              Colossians 3:8-10   NKJV 

We are subject to anger and losing our temper, blowing our stack and possibly using some uncontrolled language that goes with the territory. Just look at an average day. You get up later than normal, the kids are not ready for school and have no intention of getting ready, the telephone rings and it is one of those long calls that you could well do without. You shout at the kids, your spouse and even the cat and the dog who are in the way and then you dash out to do the school run and find there has been a heavy frost and the windscreen of the car is iced up and you realise that you have no de-icer. Words are spoken that you later regret and you are all fired up as well. Be honest, should it be this way? Probably not, but it affects many families each and every day. How do we deal with it?

The Apostle Paul says that we should 'put off all these', he then gives us the list of things, noted above, that we should put aside. What does it mean to 'put off all these?' Literally it means to get rid of them, in other words, we should not allow them them to take hold of us and rule the moment. We need to deal with it immediately. Easier said than done, agreed, but it is essential that we need to take this action otherwise, mayhem can rule as we see from the above example. 

Paul also says in v5, that we should, 'put to death your members which are on the earth'.  These are the sins of our earthly nature. They don't belong in our life and as believers, we have taken off the old man with all of this rubbish and put on the new man, built in Jesus. Why dirty up what Jesus has made clean? They are just grave clothes, therefore we need to put on the clean clothes of a new life that Jesus has given us.

He knows how difficult it is but He showers us with His grace and favour and will help us, every inch of the way. But we have to 'put off all of these', to get rid of them and to deal with it. They do not belong anymore. Part of the word Paul says in verse 9 is 'Do not lie to one another'. Do you realise that we lie to one another every time we try to cover up our problems? Instead of covering them up, when you meet with another believer, ask them to pray for you. This helps to remove the traces of worldly behaviour. Whether we like it or not, we need each other.

Copyright 2021 Grahame Howard.                                 

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Controlling anger

"Sensible people control their temper; they earn respect by overlooking wrongs."      

                                                                                                        Proverbs 29:11 NLT 

This is a practice that we all need to be in control of. Reacting to things in an angry manner can lead to all kinds of problems. It can separate people and also land you in very serious positions with the authorities. It also breaks relationships.

Proverbs 19:11 in The Amplified Bible offers this:

'Good sense and discretion make a man slow to anger, and it is his honour and glory to overlook transgression or an offence [without seeking revenge and harbouring a resentment]. James also makes mention of being, 'Slow to anger' in James 1:19.

1 Corinthians 13:5 tells us that love keeps no record of being wronged, and this is the most important part of controlling our anger. It takes discipline to hold our anger in. When someone has wronged us, the natural thing to do is to retaliate. However, as I mention quite a lot, we are not natural people, we are supernatural; we belong to God and He would have us learn to handle things the way He would.

It is all about self-discipline and this takes practice. We can't just expect to be blessed with the ability to withhold angry feelings when we first become Christians. It can take years of practice but, as we submit to God at every opportunity, it can be accomplished. Think of it this way, when we are offended, hurt or treated very badly, there is a strong man within us that is longing to get out and sort the situation out in a very worldly manner. In order to prevent this, we have to restrain this strong man.

Actually, it is not far wrong to look at it this way because, in certain situations the devil oppresses us and attempts to get us to react in an angry or hostile manner, when we are hurt. We have to take control at once before it gets out of hand and we blow our witness and cause possible mayhem. When we are not in control, nasty words can be spoken and they can seem like a dagger to the person who receives them. Once spoken they can never be taken back. Therefore, it is so important to be in control instead of being controlled.

Stop keeping a record of the wrongs people have done to you. It serves no purpose other then to wind you up. Get rid of the record and instead, forgive and love them. Hard to do, yes, but it is what Jesus would do.

Copyright 2021 Grahame Howard.                                 

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