The mother of the woman who was shot to death by Oscar Pistorius last year says she is prepared to forgive him and only wants “the truth of what happened” so that she can remove “bitterness” from her life.

In a closed country in the Middle-East, 20yr old Rambod receives a New Testament from a friend. That night he begins to read. He reads & reads, starting with Matthew and just keeping going. Around two  o’clock in the morning, something happens. “something exploded in my brain” he says later, “and I knew I had found the answer to my questions. I found out that God is the lover and I am the loved one. I started to cry and surrendered my life to the God of the Bible.

The Church on its knees

Re-establishing  & renewing our covenant with God

Remembering our first love

Re-dedicating our whole lives to God for His will & way & pursing this with our whole being

Biblical

The Greek word used in the Bible is PROPHETEIA and signifies the speaking forth of the mind and counsel of God. It is the declaration of that which cannot be known by natural means. Its purpose is to edify, comfort and encourage. The message of the prophet was a direct revelation of the mind of God for the occasion. The message of the teacher, however,  is gathered from the completed revelation contained in the Bible.

“If God is there, why doesn’t He make Himself more obvious?”  Whether asked as an anguished cry of faith (Psalms 10:1), or in the triumphant rhetoric of unbelief (John 7:3-5), the assumption behind the question is the same: God’s apparent “hiddenness” is strange and almost embarrassing for Him.  If God really is there, He owes us to make it more obvious.

The Bible’s view, however, is different.  “Truly,” exclaims Isaiah, “You are a God Who hides Himself, O God and Saviour of Israel” (Isaiah 45:15).  Solomon agrees: “It is the glory of God to conceal things” (Proverbs 25:2); and Jesus praises His Heavenly Father for exactly this:

“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure’” (Luke 10:21).

Although the Bible records moments in history when God’s presence was unmistakable (e.g. Exodus 14:21-31), for much of the Old Testament, God seemed far away from His chosen people, whether during the centuries of Egyptian slavery (Genesis 15:13; Acts 7:6), under the rule of the Judges (1 Samuel 3:1), during the Babylonian exile, or for 400 years after the prophet Malachi.  Even in the New Testament, when God Himself came into the world as the man Jesus Christ (John 1:14), He remained hidden from many.  His humble birth in a Bethlehem manger, rather than in a royal palace (Luke 2:7), and His early years in the obscure town of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23) confused those who expected the Messiah to come in grandeur (Matthew 2:1-2; John 1:45-46).  During Jesus’ public ministry, many were blind to God’s presence among them, including not only Jesus’ religious opponents (John 7:24-27), but also the wider Jewish nation (John 1:10-11) and even His own disciples (John 14:8-10).  Jesus’ identity, teaching and mission were all hidden in plain sight, in fulfilment of the only Old Testament prophesy quoted in all four Gospels, Acts and Romans:

“`Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’  Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

(Isaiah 6:9-10)

Or, as Jesus put it: “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (John 9:39).

We can now understand why God so often seems hidden.  God’s “hiddenness” is a deliberate strategy to divide humanity into two different groups.

On the one hand, Jesus promises that all who seek after God will find Him (Luke 11:9-13; cf. Jeremiah 29:13-14; Acts 17:27-28), and the search will be well worth it (Matthew 13:44-46)!  Although God is invisible (John 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17), and we cannot look directly upon His holiness (Exodus 33:18-23; Isaiah 6:1-3), God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are publicly displayed in nature (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1-4) and, most clearly of all, in the Bible (Hebrews 1:1; Psalm 19:7-11), focussed upon the good news about Jesus (Hebrews 1:2-3).  All around us today we can see that Jesus’ promise has come true: the gospel has miraculously spread (Matthew 24:14; Mark 14:9), in spite of terrible persecution (Acts 5:38-39), to all the nations of the world (Matthew 28:18-20)!

On the other hand, Jesus warns that whoever will not search for God will have taken from them even what little they once had (Mark 4:24-25).  Like unbelieving Israel, which silenced God’s prophets and eventually His Son (Mark 12:1-12), so also many today blind themselves to God’s self-revelation in creation (Romans 1:18-19, 28) and Scripture (Luke 16:27-31).  For example, when God acts through nature to create a universe which, in the words of Physicist Stephen Hawking, “appear[s] to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration,”[1] secularists dismiss God because His work is scientifically explicable; but when God acts in a way that is outside science, such as in Jesus’ miraculous resurrection from the dead, secularists dismiss God’s work as being scientifically impossible!

If you are a Christian, and God feels far away from you, take heart: God has not abandoned you!  God’s “hiddenness,” like every other trial in life, is designed to refine your faith (1 Peter 1:6-7) as you learn to draw even closer to Him.  Search your life and pray, in case God is disciplining you for some unrepented sin (Isaiah 59:2; Micah 3:4; 1 Peter 3:7, 12).  If your conscience is clear, take comfort from King David, and other great Biblical heroes of faith, who have also been where you are now, and learned to trust God in the darkness (e.g., Psalms 13; 44 and 69).  Look forward in certain hope to the New Creation (Romans 8:18-25), where you will at last see God face-to-face (1 John 3:2; Revelation 22:4).  And look back in faith to Jesus Christ, who has made this possible.  Because He Himself was abandoned by God in the darkness (Mark 15:33-34), we will not be shut out forever when He returns (Matthew 25:30).

As Peter puts it: “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9).

[1] Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, “The Grand Design” (New York: Bantam Books, 2010), 162.

“why hadn’t I been healed, though I had prayed for three years? … why was there no answer, only this stony silence in the room, that mocked my prayers.  I said  his name again, and pleaded my case in despair. Still there was no answer. Then I cried out in a fever of pain, ‘ If you are able to,heal me – otherwise tell me’ I could go no further along the road.

What happened next is something I find it hard to put into words. I know that the whole room filled with light. … I covered myself were with my shawl. I was so frightened. … the doors and the windows were shut. I then became aware of figures in long robes, standing in the midst of the light, some feet from  my bed. There were 12 figures in a row.  …..I bowed my head and I prayed. ‘ O God who are these people?’

Suddenly a voice said, ‘Get up. This is the path you have been seeking. I am Jesus son of Mary, to whom you have been praying. …you get up and come to me.    I started to weep. ‘ O Jesus I am crippled. I can’t get up’

He said ‘stand up and come to me. I am Jesus’  When I hesitated he said again a second & third time.

And I, Gulshan Fatima, who had beeb crippled on my bed 19yrs, felt new strength flowing into my wasted limbs. I put my foot on the ground and stood up.

This time of day many debate the results of their football team, the players performance, the referee and whether this was offside or that was a penalty. Was it a flailing arm? Was there intent?

Rob on the radio asks :- Were you there?  Did you see it?  Give me your thoughts.

Our personal hands on view of the game is like  testimony. We become a witness. Just like the disciples in the New Testament , John, Peter, Mark & the thorough Dr Luke. Their witness was not about football but about a person who spoke with authority, did healings & miracles and then was crucified (a miscarriage of justice)and then left an empty grave for which there is still no likely explanation except to believe those who were there at the time that he did in fact rise from the dead.

A game is for one afternoon and can be  soon forgotten. What we think about the witness regarding Jesus Christ is eternal.

I was watching this film on TV this week & was struck by the courage of the lady Gladys Aylward(who looks nothing like Ingrid by the way), especially the scene where she enters the prison compound alone during a riot . In the film she is almost axed.  Was this added to the film to give it more drama or did this really happen?

During her second year in Yangcheng, there was a riot in the men’s prison that no one could control.   The Mandarin sent her there to stop the riot.  What was a foreign missionary woman to do in the chaotic prison where convicts such as murderers, bandits and thieves were rioting and killing each other?  Gladys asked, “Why don’t you send the soldiers to stop it?  If I went in, they will kill me!”

The prison governor said, “How can they kill you?   You tell everybody that you have the living God inside you.  You preach it everywhere –in the streets and villages.”    Gladys prayed, “Oh God, give me strength” and she went in.

There were several dead bodies in the courtyard of the prison and blood everywhere.  A convict with a meat axe with blood on it was ready to strike.  Gladys prayed in her heart, “God, do your will.”  She stepped toward the man and commanded, “Hand that axe to me.”  Should he strike this “foreign devil?”  Suddenly his face dissolved into meekness and he handed her the axe.  She restored order in the hellish prison and later even helped to improve the prison conditions.

Gladys’s nickname changed from “foreign devil” to “Ai-Weh-Deh,” which means a “Virtuous one.  Gladys simply depended on God for help and served the Chinese people.

He gives eternal life to each one you have given him. ³ And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

Sociologist  Robert Woodberry researched this topic in 2012.

The implication is that the way to achieve the greatest social and cultural transformation is not to focus on social and cultural transformation, but on the “conversion” of individuals from false religions to faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. Or to put it another way, missionaries (and pastors and churches) will lose their culturally transforming power if they make cultural transformation their energizing focus.