Month: July 2017

 

Key Passage – 2 Kings 2 : 19-22

Key Text: “Thus says the Lord: ‘I have healed this water; from it there shall be no more death or barrenness.’” 2 Kings 2:21

 

The Source. The Fountain-Head. The Origin. The Foundation. The Beginning. The Genesis. These are all words a strategic thinker employs when trying to resolve a problem. But you would be surprised how many people attempt to solve problems and enigmas by dealing with the fruit or symptoms.

So, take the case of this lady called Grace. Grace was grossly overweight and no matter what she tried, she always ended up adding more weight. She is a very nice person, loves people and the Lord, but simply hated herself. She had severe low self-esteem and she often attributed her mood swings to her lack of control over her diet and her excessive weight gains.

Fast forward many years and Grace meets Ed. Ed loved Grace and accepted her the way she was. Never judged her and never once complained about her weight. Grace started feeling better about herself and for the first time, took a deep breath and considered her state without feeling bad. She then had an ‘aha’ moment. She realised she had always felt bad about herself and she traced it to the fact that her dad always told he she was not pretty.

Ed on the other hand said the exact opposite. Ed married her when she was a size 20. Ed just loved Grace. Grace now somehow felt better about herself, could ask God for help, forgive her dad and began a diet that made her lose all the excess weight and she became a slim size 10 dress in less than two years. Grace has never regained the weight and today she is a very happy mother of three beautiful children and totally adores her Ed. The fact is she discovered the root of her problem and the rest is history like they say.

The passage today shows us how God does not deal with symptoms primarily, but He goes to the root of the matter and deals with it. In this powerful story, the men of a certain city came to Elisha, explaining that the location of the city was quite nice, but the water was bad and it caused death and barrenness on the land. Elisha’s response is quite instructive. He asked for salt to be put in a clean bowl, then he took the salt and emptied it at the source of the river that flowed through the city and blessed the source and told the men, the river had been cleansed and it would no longer produce death or barrenness, and the bible says it remains so to this day!

God has the solution to every human problem. God understood that the genesis of man’s problems is sin. God therefore sent Jesus Christ His son, as a sinless man, to redeem sinful man and as a result, whoever believes in Jesus will be miraculously transformed from sinner to saint. This is the mystery of the gospel or the good news of the Kingdom. All you need to have a transformed life is to get fixed at the source. If your nature is sinful, you would always produce sin, despite your most valiant efforts to do right. It is an effort in futility.

What is your problem today? Have you considered the perfect provision of Calvary? The Cross of Jesus Christ, where God supernaturally absorbed and dealt with all man’s problems and provided the permanent antidote and release for mankind. Please hear me. Whatever you may be going through today. Whatever the problem. Jesus fully paid for you to have a solution, but you need to discover the source or foundations of your problem and then apply the power of the cross to that source and watch God perform His healing and restorative work in your life.

Is it that simple? Yes. Absolutely. Just some salt at the source and the water is purified. God’s salt is His Son Jesus. He is the simple solution God provided for man to be free. Without Him, there is no hope of transformation.

What are you waiting for?

Let’s Pray: Father God, today I ask for your help in resolving the problems of my life. I recognise I have been trying to solve my problems by dealing with all the symptoms and I have done a bad job. Father today, I acknowledge your perfect provision for my predicament. I accept Jesus Christ you son into my life and I ask that you deal with my problem at its very roots and foundation. By faith I apply the Salt of God, Jesus to the source of my life’s challenges and by faith I declare I am healed and restored. Thank you for your grace and mercy. Amen.

 

Key Passage: 2 Kings 6:1-7

Key Text: Malachi 3:6 – “For I am the Lord, I do not change;

Is the earth still rotating around the sun? Did night give way to day this morning? Did birds sing and cocks crow? Is time still working? Then we can be sure that God is still on His throne and whatever He says will come to pass!!

One thing about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is that He never changes. This He said unequivocally in the book of Malachi Chapter 3 and verse 6, (NKJV) “For I am the Lord, I do not change; and the book of Hebrews 13:8 tells us Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. So this should make us ask some questions on the practice of our faith today and the dearth of miracles and earth shattering signs and wonders, we see in the bible. There are those who believe in the cessation of these aspects of our faith, but I am not even going to entertain such thoughts. God is still doing miracles today and we just need to adjust our theology to be very expectant of His miraculous intervention in our seemingly impossible situations.

Going back to the miracle of the floating axe-head, God clearly demonstrated that what man says is impossible is not impossible for Him. He showed clearly that the laws of nature will be suspended if He so chooses to express His sovereignty and power. It is good to sometimes, stop and ponder these miracles and imagine what it would have felt like to have stood by the banks of the Jordan River and experienced the sunk axe-head float back to the surface, simply because a stick was thrown into the river. All I can say is WOW!

God parted the Red sea for Moses and Israel to pass through on dry ground; God caused the Jordan to roll back so Joshua and Israel could cross over into the Promised Land. Jesus walked on water, calmed the storm, and turned water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee. God can do anything and He is still doing the extra-ordinary, mind blowing, earth shattering miracles today. I mean right now!

Have you got an impossible situation on your hands? Is there a raging sea of trouble ahead of you? Is there a problem so befuddling that you are forced to cry out in despair? Let me ask you to take your eyes off your situation for a moment today and look up to the God of the bible. The God of Abraham. The Lord of Hosts. The God of the Armies of Heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ, who has conquered death, hell and the grave. Just look at Him and hear what he said in His word. He said ‘I am the God of all flesh, Is anything too hard for me?’ He said ‘with God nothing shall be impossible.’ The prophet Jeremiah cried out “Ah Lord God, you have created the heavens and the earth by your great power, nothing is too difficult for you.”

Your situation is no too hard for God to change around. He is ready to help and transform your difficult situation. Just ask Him. The God of miracles is ready and willing and more than able!!!

Enjoy this song!

Let’s pray: Dear Father, creator of the heavens and the earth, please show your power to my generation and let your children see Your great miracles in their lives. There are those who are faced with impossible situations as far as man is concerned, but Lord, You are not and cannot be limited and You know no impossibilities. Please intervene and confound the sceptics. Lord thank you for what You are doing in the earth today. Thank you for Your faithfulness. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

 

 

 

Key Word – 2 Kings 6:1-7

 

Key Text – 2 Kings 6:6 – (NKJV) “So he cut off a stick, and threw it in there; and he made the iron float.”

Recently, it has become obvious to me that humanity is getting carried away with our ability to solve our problems and deal with the many challenges that face us. This is not bad in a sense, because it means we are accepting responsibility for our actions and making adjustments to make our world a better place. Well that’s the theory of it. It is called Humanism. This would have been excellent, except that man is clueless as to how the earth was made and how it ought to function, without reference to God who created the earth and made man the overseer. Somehow in this arrangement, God never intended for man to become totally independent of Him. Actually God expects man to carry out his responsibilities of tending and keeping the earth, by depending on Him for the knowledge, power and grace to administrate the earth. As it stands now all man’s best efforts are failing and our world seems to be hurtling towards conflagration and bleakness. I really don’t want to be pessimistic, so I would refrain from recounting our many failures.

But today I come as a bearer of good news, not a harbinger of doom. Man can redirect his efforts and reclaim the world in the proper order, if we collectively acknowledge that without the divine, we are really going to be ineffective. Man needs God. Period. Without God’s help, man is doomed to fail. Man will fail without God.

So today’s passage shows us a very incredible story. The sons of the prophet decided to expand their dwelling place. They set about the work by cutting down some trees to make the new homes etc. Suddenly the iron axe-head came loose from the wood and fell into the water. It sank to the bottom immediately. There was no way to retrieve it, it was lost. So the building project will have to be stalled or abandoned, as there is no axe to hew down wood. But they cried out to the man of God, Elisha, and he asked where they feel the axe-head fell into the water. He cut off a piece of wood and threw it into the water and the iron axe-head floated to the surface. Elisha asked the man to pick it up and continue his work. Such a simple solution to a difficult problem???

There are many dimensions to this story to corroborate my position above. But I will deal with a couple today and continue, as I feel led.

1. The wooden part of the Axe is symbolic of man and the Iron is symbolic of God. So in effect the wood alone cannot cut down trees, it needs the iron head, so without God man is useless. But it also important to note, that God has chosen to use man to do His work; so without man, God will not work. This is the mystery of God’s love for mankind.
2. Whatever man needs to do to make this life better requires the help and intervention of God. Man cannot function effectively without the assistance and support of God. Hence the Axe-head. The moment the Axe-head fell off, the building had to be stopped. Once God is out of the equation, our best efforts become futile.
3. God has ways to solve our intractable problems that is beyond the comprehension and capacity of the human logic to explain away. How does a piece of stick thrown into the river make the axe-head float? How? This is totally illogical and no scientific law backs this up. So this is purely a miracle and it in the realms of faith and the supernatural. It is in God’s logic. God’s sense. So all we can do here is simply submit to His superior wisdom and ways.

Today, you may be confronted with a big problem that defies human logic and all your best efforts seem futile. Please remember that there is a God in heaven who created you and who is so powerful there is nothing He cannot do. Please try asking for His help and you will be surprised what His solution maybe. I pray you get a great testimony to share with us.

Finally, I just want to leave you with a thought. How does Jesus hanging on a tree on the Mount of Calvary redeem mankind? And how does one believing in this event save one eternally? Well the floating Axe-head has a clue to this conundrum.

Only believe!!!

 

Let’s Pray: Father God, your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts. We have sought to solve our problems without your help and we have ended up making a bigger mess. Forgive us. Today, we ask you to intervene in our affairs (Please ask Him specifically for what you need His help with), and help us to have the solutions only you can provide for us. Father, thank you for answering us in your love. In Jesus mighty name we have prayed. Amen.