EXPERIENCING THE PEACE OF GOD

Last Sunday we studied the name Yahweh Shalom (the Lord is peace) from the story of Gideon in Judges 6.  When Gideon realized that he had been speaking to God face to face, he was terrified and assumed he would die (6:22-23).  Responding to Gideon, God simply said the word “Shalom” (6:23).

We learned that the word ‘Shalom’ translated ‘peace’ in English, means total well-being and complete wholeness.  But this definition is ironic in the story of Gideon.  The circumstances of Gideon’s life were difficult and even desperate.  Like the rest of Israel, he was facing poverty and even the potential of starvation due to the oppression of the Midianites.   When we think of the meaning of Shalom we can think of the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the Bible, when God’s Creation was perfect and “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Or we might think of the end of the Bible in the new earth where there will be “no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).  Shalom is a perfect description for both of these scenes.  The wonderful lesson of the story of Gideon is this: We can experience Shalom, even when our circumstances are difficult and painful, if God is with us.

Have you found that to be true?  Personally, it has been one of the most painful and precious lessons of my life.  Perhaps you can relate.  As someone who is prone to worry and melancholy, I have had my share of anxiety and depression.  Earlier in my life I would read that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).  The problem was that I wasn’t experiencing peace.  It seemed out of reach.  My assumption was that if I read the verse and prayed for relief from my anxiety that God would take it away, but He didn’t.  My anxiety and depression lingered for years.  Eventually through the Holy Spirit and some wise counsel, the Lord opened my eyes to what I was missing from the previous verse which says “Do not be anxious about anything…” (Philippians 4:6).  The life changing lesson for me was this: When God says “don’t” He is alerting me to a choice that I need to make.  When God says “do not be afraid” (or “do not be anxious”) it means there is a choice involved in my anxiety.  I can’t see myself as a victim of my fear and wait passively for God to take away those feelings.  I need to get to work. 

So what do we need to do to experience the Shalom of God even when life is filled with pain and anxiety?

1. Repent and believe!  Where God is, Shalom is, and those who have turned to and trusted in Christ for salvation are ‘in Christ’ and Christ is in them.  This is the basis for experiencing Shalom with God!

2. Refuse fear!  God says “do not be anxious” and so we begin by refusing to give ourselves permission to be afraid.  (Note: fear and anxiety are basically the same thing!)  We begin to make war on our anxiety by refusing to give space in our mind to fearful and anxious thoughts.

3. Replace fear with truth!  In the Bible, when God says, “do not be afraid” He often adds, “for I am with you!”  It is not enough for us to fight against anxious thoughts in our minds if we don’t replace those thoughts with the truth of Scripture.  This is where our minds begin to work together with our faith and our will.  I must choose to think in my mind and believe in my heart that what God has said is true.

Once I understood the choices involved in my mental health I began to battle.  At the outset it seemed like the devil kept a fire hose of negative thoughts flowing constantly into my mind.  Over time, as I learned to refuse wrong thinking and replace it with right thinking and believing, I realized there was a kink in the devil’s firehose!  What used to be a flood became a trickle.  I began to experience the Bible’s promise of Shalom.  I began to experience the peace of God.  Let me summarize what had changed in my life:

When I passively waited for God to make me feel Shalom, I had only anxiety.

When, in obedience to God, I began to battle my anxiety by thinking and believing God’s promises, I began to experience Shalom.

In my life, this was a journey, and it’s a journey that continues as new anxieties come into my mind and heart.  It is a battle that ebbs and flows in my life as I experience new circumstances and life’s many emotions.  God came to Gideon to invite him to lead the battle against the enemy.  God was with Gideon to bring Shalom even in the face of impossible odds.  The same is true for us.  God invites us into a spiritual battle saying, “do not be afraid for I am with you!”

YAHWEH RAPHA – DOES GOD HEAL?

YAHWEH RAPHA – DOES GOD HEAL?

“I am Yahweh who heals you” (Exodus 15:26).  This is the meaning of the name Yahweh Rapha that God revealed to Israel soon after He brought them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea.  But what does that mean for us?  Does God heal people today?

One view held by some believers is known as ‘cessationism.’  Cessation comes from the word ‘cease’ and this view says that God has ceased from doing miracles in our time.  This view is based on a few factors:

1. We don’t tend to see legitimate miracles as described in the time of Jesus and the early church, or at least not in our part of the world.

2. It is a reaction against fake ‘miracles’ in some extreme charismatic churches.

3. It points to 1 Corinthians 13:8 that states that ‘prophecies,’ ‘tongues’ and ‘knowledge’ will cease.

Another view in the Christian world is the view that God not only still does miracles, but that He intends to prosper us and has promised to heal us if we would only ask in faith.  Some of the Biblical arguments used to support this view include:

1. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), and so He must still intend to heal people today as He did in the past.

2. Jesus taught that we should pray that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10) so we should pray for and expect that God will heal disease on earth today since there is no disease in Heaven.

3. Sickness is believed to be caused by the Devil, so believers need only to resist Him (James 4:7) which will cause Him to flee and will allow healing to come.

There are problems with both of these views.  The problem with cessationism is:

1. It is a view that is rooted in western Christianity where the church has been established and healthcare has been widely available.  Stories of legitimate miracles are more common in places where the church is just getting established.  This fits with the pattern of miracles in the Book of Acts when God used miracles to confirm the Gospel and establish His church.

2. Even here in our western culture, there are believers who have experienced legitimate miracles of one kind or another, including miracles of healing.

3. The Biblical support for cessationism is quite weak.  In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul is referring to the culmination of redemption at the return of Christ “when completeness comes” (1 Corinthians 13:10), not to a period of time before Christ returns when miracles stop happening.

4. In James 5:14-16, the Bible instructs those who are ill to call for their church Elders to pray for their healing.

On the other hand, God doesn’t heal every sickness or physical ailment among believers in our day, and here’s why:

1. The basic story line of the Bible is that:

   a. God made a perfect world with no sickness or disease (Genesis 1:31).

   b. When human beings sinned against God, they brought a curse upon themselves and this world that included physical disease (Genesis 3:17-19).

   c. This curse will not be lifted until the return of Christ (Romans 8:19-23; Revelation 21:4; 22:3) and so we can’t expect the full eradication of sickness until that time.

2. God allowed some New Testament believers to experience illness (2 Corinthians 12:7-10; 2 Timothy 4:20).

3. We know from experience that God often does not heal believers of sickness in our day and in fact all believers are still aging and dying until the return of Christ.

4. God has promised to use trials of various kinds to mature us and grow our faith (James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7).

So what should our attitude be toward sickness and healing?  When a believer becomes sick, it is right to do exactly what the Scripture instructs us to do in James 5:14-16, to “call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.”  In keeping with the passage, the believer, along with the Elders should:

1. Prayerfully consider whether there is a sin that God wants to address in the believer’s life, and if so, confess it openly and repent.  (We should not assume that a believer’s sickness is because of a secret sin!  Remember, we all experience health issues because we are under the curse until Christ returns.)

2. Anoint with oil, lay hands upon the sick believer and boldly pray for healing, believing that God can do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

3. Remember that we pray humbly before the throne of God.  Our prayers do not place us on the throne and God as our servant.  We will trust His goodness and plan whether He chooses to heal or not.

4. We should pursue whatever healthcare opportunities are available to treat any physical condition that we are experiencing.  While our healthcare system isn’t perfect, we can be grateful for scientific discoveries that have been made and those who are trained to treat our health concerns.

So if God doesn’t always choose to heal His people, is He really Yahweh Rapha, our healing God?  The answer of course is yes!  We must always remember that God’s primary healing ministry to His people is the healing of their souls.  He heals us of our sins (Isaiah 53:5) and He is transforming our broken lives into the likeness of Christ Himself (Romans 8:28-29).  He intends to root out our bad habits and flawed character and make us holy as He is.  Many believers can attest to the fact that it was through suffering (including sickness) that God did His greatest healing work, not in their body but in their hearts!  It is right for us to seek this soul healing and invite God to do His good work in us, even when it is painful.  And let us look forward to the day when we stand before Christ fully healed, both physically and spiritually.  The curse will be gone, and we will be like Jesus!

THE IDOLATRY TESTS

 “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21 NIV).  That’s how John the Apostle ended his first letter recorded in Scripture.  It’s kind of shocking, isn’t it?  Clearly, he was writing to believers (he called them “dear children”).  Is idolatry really a problem for genuine followers of Christ?  Perhaps it was for believers near the end of the 1st Century when idols were everywhere in Roman/Greek culture.  Surely we are too sophisticated to fall into idolatry in our day!  Sadly, that is not the case, especially if we recognize that worshiping false gods doesn’t necessarily require an image fashioned by human hands.

 Humanity was made in God’s image; made to be worshippers of God who live in dependence on Him and live for His glory.  When humanity sinned, we took on a sin nature; a bent that directs us away from God and toward self.  But we are still worshippers by nature!  We still live in dependence on something or someone.  We still glory in people or in things.  This is why false worship is so normal for human beings, even for us sophisticated ones.  It is also why John’s warning about idolatry is so appropriate, even for the followers of Christ.

 As believers we have turned from our old lives of sin and toward Christ.  We have come to see Him as the God and Savior of our lives, and yet in our humanness we will continue to battle our tendency toward false worship.  Until we stand in eternity, fully transformed into the image of Christ, we are in a battle that requires our vigilance against idolatry.

 This is why the ‘idolatry tests’ can be so helpful.  These tests can’t eradicate false worship from our lives, but they can expose it.  Exposing our false worship, renouncing it, and replacing it, will deepen our walk with Christ.  We will learn to value Him, depend on Him and glorify Him more fully, day by day.

Test #1 – Glory Test – What is glorious to me?

OK, so the word ‘glory’ isn’t a word that we use all that much but the idea here is this: What is beautiful to me?  What has captured my attention?  What is the ultimate thing in my life?  The way to test this is to simply consider: What do I think about?  What do I read about?  What do I research online?  What do I wish I had or wish I had more of?  If God isn’t my ultimate, the one thing I want most in my life, then I have work to do.

Test #2 – The Value Test – What do I value most?

This test is easy to take.  Just think of how you spend your time and money.  And I don’t just mean the small amount of disposable time and money you might have available at any given moment.  We all make choices that determine how much disposable time and income we have.  If I have very little disposable income because I have chosen a high standard of living, or if I have little available time because my standard of living requires me to work long hours or multiple jobs, then what I value most is becoming clear.  Worship is all about worth.  The thing we value is the thing we worship.  Time and money are the easiest ways to determine what we truly worship.

Test #3 – The Identity Test – Who am I, really?

God created humanity to be His people.  His desire was to live in relationship with us as our Father.  The New Testament deepens the true identity of the believer by describing us as being “in Christ.”  To be a follower of Christ is to identify myself with Him above all else.  But it is so easy for us to seek an identity that is rooted in other things.  Do I want to be known by my education, my job, my business success, my fitness, my vehicle, my clothing, my athletic ability, my home or my social media persona?  All of these things can be an idol if I want my reputation to be known by something other than Christ.

Test #4 – The Coping Test – How do I cope when life is hard?

Remember that human beings were made to live in dependence on God.  To sin against God is to say, “God, I don’t need you.”  The problem with that is that we are far needier than we realize.  When we abandon the God who made us, we find alternative things to meet our needs and help us cope with life.  Examples include alcohol, cigarettes, food, excessive sleep, social media, entertainment, and exercise.  Notice that some of these alternatives are not bad, but they also aren’t God.  As followers of Christ, we have come to believe in Him, which means that we have entrusted our lives to Him.  But do we have other things we turn to to help us cope?

So what do we do when these tests expose false worship in our lives?  When you recognize idols in your life, be thankful!  God has opened your eyes.  Seeing idolatry might be the hardest part!  Once you have seen it, you need to begin to undermine the power and importance of that thing in your life.  Fasting is an example of how this can work.  Many of us value food far too much.  We eat too much, we eat the wrong things, we eat when we feel down, or we spend too much time thinking about food.  Fasting is a temporary way of acknowledging that we “do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).  It is a way of turning our attention and our full dependence to God.  It helps to loosen the grip that food can have in our lives.  This principle can apply to other things that have become idols.  Sometimes we need to purge and/or downsize.

Removing something from our lives is not enough, however.  Unless we put the right thing in place of the wrong, we will fall right back into our idolatry.  This is why we must continually set our eyes on Christ.  We must think about who He is and what He has done for us.  The more we think about Him and the beauty of His character and love, the more we are transformed.  Bit by bit, day by day, our hearts are turned from selfishness and idol worship to simply enjoying and depending on God Himself.  As this happens, He is glorified.  My life displays the goodness God.

Are you ready to get to work?  Dear children, keep yourselves from idols!