Jan | 08 | Of Picking Scabs & Pouring Honey

Key Word:- REAL

Title:- Of Picking Scabs & Pouring Honey

Acts 1:3….to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs,

Often presented as a winged figure hovering over the victor in a competition, the Greek God Nike, the daughter of the giant Pallas and the River Styx, came to be recognized by the Ancient Greek world, as a mediator of peace between gods and mortals. Therefore, bearing the same name, 'Nike', the company of this Post-modern world, that for so long now has presented itself as the present mediator between life and boredom, still shouts daily into our lives through its often seen and much repeated advertising tag line: “Just Do It!” --------- “Nike! Just Do It!” Now friends, have you noticed that the gods of this world, so consistently and rudely marketed to us, a much drooled after dog of a life, that is easily gained by “just buying our product and singing our song?”
Performer ‘Eddie Cochrane’ and the 1970's group 'Showaddywaddy'’ had but three steps to heaven and in this same vein ‘Nike’ and all the other dominant sales gods of this present world, hit us all the time with their own three personal steps to glory, these being: competition, confident achievement, and worldly success. Let me say them again; competition, confident achievement, and worldly success!

Jesus however, the only true mediator between eternal life and cosmic boredom; between life and death; between light and darkness; between God and man; presents us with four steps to heaven, four steps to life that is and they are by no means cheap and they are by no means easy. Here they are:

1) Suffer
2) Die
3) Live and then
4) Present such new life, with such infallible and irrefutable proof that others of equal thirst and hunger will also come to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Let me say that again! 1) Suffer 2) Die 3) Live and then 4) Present such new life, with such infallible and irrefutable proof that others of equal thirst and hunger will also come to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Friends, Jesus modeled and completed these four steps for us and in this broken, hurt and cynical world in which we now live and move and have our being, we His disciples, must unconditionally model the same.

Jesus the ‘Resurrection Man’ is the only one that can take unthinkable suffering and rancid death and turn it into indisputable LIFE! He alone has the power to do this. His people and therefore His church should be full of 'life from the dead' if indeed they are full of Him!

Yet for many in the church, the stench of death still oozes from a scabby, pale and putrid puke scab, which has been allowed to solidify and sit there, right on our upper lip and right underneath our nose, for all the world to see and all the church to smell, especially ourselves. Now, even though we honestly find this scab both unsightly and nauseating, the truth is that for many generations, this noxious odour and I shall soon tell you what it is, this noxious odour of empty religion, there it is, and dutiful death, there it is! This stinky scab, both in the church and on the so-called sons of His love, has become an acceptable stench in all our gatherings! Religion, painless and eternally unprofitable religion, friends, it just stinks! But today it’s no longer acceptable, it's just no good. This scab of dead religion needs picking, for we need to smell life in one another, on one another! We the church, need to be seen to be the actual princely possessors and the only true purveyors of true living! We need to look, sound and taste like life to others that are only just, still coming to see what the dying noise and the rushing mighty wind was supposed to be all about!

Believers with sallow cheeks, pale brows and emaciated spiritual bodies, are all pictures of the concentration camps from which we are supposed to have been delivered! But if we are indeed in Christ, why should we in our spirits still look so poor and emaciated to many a hungry seeker?

Enough! We need to pray to see God's rainbow of promise break out once more over one another's heads. We need to hear moans of hopelessness, being replaced by the battle song of the goodness of God. We need to have the taste of Mara's bitter waters removed from our tongues by the over indulgent, overflowing taste of the sweetness of heaven’s honey, that most glorious of grace, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and do you know? Do you know? Do you really know that when this life grace is poured into our open and hungry mouths, that it will generate a real and an understood and deeply felt, fully apprehended, chewed upon and truly comprehended, smiling and most certain, heavenly hope of abundant life ! Oh Yes it will!

Let's smell, touch, taste and SEE, if indeed the ‘Son of Righteousness’ has risen with healing in His wings and is in His resurrection power both truly in us and among us! Let’s have the courage to ask this question of ourselves and then the integrity to accept an honest answer.

From now on, infallible proofs of resurrection life are all we should accept dear friends, to know that Jesus is truly among us! For the world is waiting for that proof and will accept no other. The world knows what we the church seem to have forgotten; that everything else we are trying to walk in, EVERYTHING, is after all, just expensive dust and air. Even if it is Nike Air!

This year then, let’s walk in Jesus, His life and His resurrection power! For you have to have it before you can live it and walk in it. So let me ask you today, Life? Have you truly got it? Good, now 'just do it!'

Listen: -I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” John 10:10b-11

Pray: - Lord, deliver me from the smelly and petty precincts of plastic Zion into the glorious living of Your magnificent kingdom. Endow me and embellish me with proofs of Your resurrection and Your life, in Your great name I pray, Amen.