Are signs and wonders always 'nice'?

I was reading in Exodus this morning as the Lord showed up to Moses in the burning bush and then the experiences, the signs and wonders, that God showed him which actually led to a 'fear' of God through the rod turning to a snake, Moses runs from the snake, through Moses putting his hand in his cloak and it turning leprous, then all the things that happened as the Lord brought deliverance to his people with the Egyptians. These were not 'wonders' that we would often attribute to as wonders, but rather they brought a fear and reverence and power to who our God actually is.

Like Moses when God performs some of his 'wonders' we can often run from them, afraid, unsure, challenged, recognising our own weaknesses and inabilities and like Moses in 4:13 "O Lord, please send someone else to do it" but the Lord chooses to use vessels who in their own strength, cannot do it, because then He will get all the glory due to his name. 2 Cor 4:7 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."

We are weak vessels, jars of clay and yet God chooses to reveal His glory through us and sometimes His glory is not the 'glory' we are expecting. Sometimes His glory will bring a 'fear' a wanting to run, will bring 'wonders' that might actually not be 'nice' and yet it brings the reverence back to who our God is and that He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we think, ask or imagine.

In the story of Moses this morning I am reminded that he was bringing his people out of slavery into a spacious place flowing in milk and honey and still today He is doing the same thing. Bringing His people in bondage, in slavery and oppression, into a place of sonship and a spacious place of freedom, flowing with milk and honey. In order to take us into those places He has for us, sometimes He will perform miracles, signs and wonders, that are not necessarily 'nice' but bring the truth to who our God is. When the Israelites were finally freed from captivity, there were many wonders God performed, but they certainly challenged everyone (Egyptians and Israelites I would imagine) at the time through the many deaths, the plagues, etc and so in God bringing ourselves into a place of freedom, it will not I believe, always be easy and nice, and there will be times we want to run, but God knows what is best and if we trust in him, we will see the deliverance of our Lord.

Exodus 6:6 "I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord."

Many of us are still living under 'slavery' of some yoke of oppression and the Lord, since the beginning of time, and through Jesus, comes to set us free from that slavery and into a land of inheritance, a spacious land flowing with milk and honey, but in order to do that sometimes the Lord will do it through mighty acts of judgement, through wonders that will make us want to run, through signs that actually show how big our God is and that He is for us, his people and He will do anything to see us come into all the promises He has for us.

Often there is this image that everything God does is 'nice', is not challenging, but I challenge you, some of the things that the Lord has done in my world has not been nice, has been very challenging and difficult at times, and yet as I have walked the journey and seen how through these things God is showing His goodness towards me and His love for me to see me be who I am called to be in Him as I trust in him, as I wait for him to do what He said He will do, as I obey the word of God, as I learn not to run from the things that I would naturally want to run from, I find myself coming into a spacious place, a place flowing with milk and honey. I encourage you this morning, Gods signs and wonders may push you out of your comfort zone, but allow him to work things through just as Moses did with Pharaoh and the many times I am sure Moses wanted to run from what the Lord was asking of him but then you see a people set free from slavery. It wasn't just about Moses, it was about a nation. And God is wanting to set our nation free from slavery and the nations of the world.

Obedience and Commitment are big things in Gods Kingdom

Reading in Acts 7 this morning the story through Stephen of Abraham being told by God to " Leave your country and your people and go the the land I will show you" So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child." As I reflected on this and the journey of Abraham stepping out in faith into a land that he received no inheritance in but a promise of what was to come for his descendants of which we live in the fruit of that, I thought of todays generations in which often is only doing things that we want to do or that will benefit us personally as we live for 'today' not worrying about tomorrow. A sense of if it feels good then do it, if it doesn't then we will move on - perhap...

I shared last night about 1 Cor 15:36 "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body..." I was preaching on it last night and it will come up in video form later in the week on the GRM sight, mainly reflecting on we can sow things one way, but God raises it up as HE determines how it should look. But this morning I got more revelation which will be quite obvious to some, but to me it struck me afresh. When we sow something it get's buried, it cannot be pulled back up. It no longer has 'connection' with 'me' if you like. It gets 'covered over' unable to be pulled up. And yet I recognise in my own life how we can sow something but there are still 'strings attached' as such as we often are still determining or expecting it be rai...

The baby's been handed over

Several weeks ago the Lord shifted us out of the 'home office' into the 'market place' and in the process a spiritual shift happened - one of letting the 'baby' go, a releasing and handing over the batten, so to speak to others. In this process the nests that WE ALL have been in have been stirred up, shaken about, and pushed out, to fly in ways that perhaps we were too afraid to do previously. The amazing thing with God is that He knows the timing of all of this and where each one of us is at and what we can handle. Yes there has been a fluttering of wings in panic. Yes, we have had a few weeks of challenge as authority and structures get changed and challenged, frustrations coming to the fore, but love helps us overcome, love helps us to forgive, love helps us to see the good and not the dirt, love helps us remember our own failings and yet forgiveness and grace that the Lord has for me, that I can give to others, remembering it's the glory of G...

The lie of a lack of spiritual fathers and mothers

My ponderings this morning. I believe we have a generation (of which I am a part of) at the moment who believe that there were not the spiritual mothers and fathers who taught them in the things of the spirit; of the way they should go etc. I believe to some extent there is truth, we don’t seem to have seen the ‘spiritual hero’s’ that we want to follow in our daily worlds around us. But I also believe that our generation or those who don’t believe there have been the spiritual parents, actually need to repent for not honouring the ones that the Lord has put in their lives and in which we have not received them as such and honoured what they inputted into our lives. There have always been people around us sowing into our lives, sowing truth, sowing help and hope, but because it has not come the way we expect it, we have not honoured what those people have brought. Sometimes too those people sow into our lives with truth that we don’t want to hear and so we walk away from those ...

A beautiful rose to be....

Yesterday I felt this need to go and buy a rose, it was not something I had planned but just felt let by the Holy Spirit to go and buy a rose bush and so I went and they were all on special because it is really the wrong time to plant them, the only ones left were the diseased, not wanted cheap ones which were $9.99 instead of $24.99. I didn't know why I had to buy them, but I just did and I ended up buying five and then felt I needed to put aside an area in my garden as a special rose garden. After sharing with this to Jim this morning the word came as to why I had to buy roses. Roses are one of the hardest plants in my opinion to look after and care for, they take a lot of work. You have to prune them, you have to regularly cut them back and cut off diseased branches, they can be prickly and cause pain, they need regularly spraying to keep the bugs off them and then they may only flower once or twice perhaps more in a season for a seemingly short time compared to a...

"And now these three remain: faith. hope and love." 1 Cor 13:13

Two pictures things the Lord has given me over the last 10 days. Firstly; Prior to going to Christchurch I had this vision where I saw this massive tree falling to the ground and taking out people around them as it fell. Then this morning I was reading in Matt 3:10 and it reminded me of that vision I saw. Matt 3:10 says “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” It’s a powerful word of warning that if we are living supposedly Godly lives and yet are not living lives that produce fruit in keeping with repentance, the fruit of love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, etc, the fruit of the spirit that is found in Gal 6, then I believe we will see people who are big people to those around them, people who are leaders etc. fall and cause damage. Secondly; Something that startled me yesterday as I was sleeping, I woke up to the sound of a clanging symbol....

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