How’s Your Heart? Have You Forgotten You Have A Father?

Here are this week's discussion notes for the Crown mid-week groups. I hope it helps you to arrive prepared for some open and honest conversation!

Read Acts 5: 1 – 13

The Sin

Satan was trying to jump on board and poison the early church from within. Ananias and Sapphira were believers but had not fully ‘put to death’ (Col 3:5) some sinful desires within them. Satan had used this to make them become obsessed with a love of money and a craving for man’s approval; this blinded them to see the extent of their deceit.   

The Surgery

God cares deeply about the integrity of the Church, and moves decisively to remove the tumour of hypocrisy and unbelief.

God’s Wrath

Our response to God’s righteous anger at sin is hugely important. The Bible is full of expressions of God’s holiness and justice, in prophetic warnings and awesome action. If we read of these past judgements and conclude that God has changed or that the writers are using ‘poetic license’ then we are in danger of underestimating and offending God in the same way that Ananias and Sapphira did. Here’s a helpful quote from Don Carson:

“We should conclude not that these were the worst of sinners around, rather that sin deserves death, and that it is because of God’s mercy that we are not each struck down whenever we sin.”[1]

A Grateful Response

Reading about displays of God’s wrath should make us reverently say, “Wow, that’s what I deserve!” The wages of sin is death, and everything I’ve earned was spent on Jesus! You need to be very careful about denying or ignoring the wrath-passages in the bible. Your view of God’s mercy is only as big as your view of His wrath. Your view of God’s grace is only as big as your view of His holiness (and your relative unworthiness).

So Hadn’t God Already Judged Ananias and Sapphira’s Sin On The Cross?

This isn’t the only display of God’s displeasure at sin in the New Testament; 1 Corinthians 11:29-32 tells us that some of the Christians in Corinth were weak, ill and even dead because they had abused the taking of bread and wine! It then goes on to explain that this judgement is discipline.

It is a glorious and mysterious truth that we have been made co-heirs with Christ! We’ve moved out of the law court and into the basketball court where our Father is lovingly training us.

The Causes Of Sickness And Suffering

It is possible, then, that our own specific sin is the cause of our own sickness or suffering; but there are other possible causes as well. Whatever the cause may be, we can take comfort in the fact that it is always either instigated or allowed by our Father; and He can use all of it for our good (Rom 8:28).

Father vs Karma

Hebrews 12: 5 asks its readers, “Have you forgotten that you have a Father?” We can very easily slip into the thinking of the world that impersonal forces are bringing a proportional consequence to all of our actions. Karma may offer an explanation for suffering but it offers no comfort or hope. Remembering that God is our Father leads us quickly to repentance of specific sin, and brings an incredible feeling of safety and comfort, even when we don’t understand. It also gives us a powerful hope for our future knowing that we are being trained and shaped for a purpose! Give me my Father over karma any day! This story should encourage us to ‘keep a short account’ with our Father.

Questions:

(Don’t let the discussion veer towards commenting on the possible causes of other people’s suffering. People did that with Jesus in Luke 13: 1-5 and He told them very strongly to just concentrate on their own situation.)

1)      Was there anything in Sunday’s message that particularly spoke to you or disagreed with you?

2)     What’s your honest, immediate reaction when you read about God’s wrath?

                       

3)     Have you ever thought that God has changed since Old Testament times? What do you think now?

4)     When you get ill or hit dark times, if you’re honest, do you explain it away as ‘karma’ or let it remind you of your loving Father?

5)     Read Luke 16: 13-15 below. How is your heart? Is it filled with love for God or hardened by a love of money?

Luke 16: 13-16

¹³ "No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

 ¹⁴ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. ¹⁵And he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.”

---

[1] How Long O Lord? Pg 101. 2006 Baker Academic

The Inevitable Consequence

I finished my last post by saying that the most important thing you can do today is enjoy God. Let's explore what it means to enjoy God and what we can expect:

Every Spiritual Blessing

Eph 1:3 tells us that in Christ we have ‘every spiritual blessing', this is a huge statement. There isn't a spiritual blessing in God's domain that isn't available to those who are in Christ! But what are 'spiritual blessings'?

In John 16:14 Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will glorify Him by taking what belongs to Him and ‘declaring it to us’. From this verse, I think we can define a spiritual blessing as the experience of having what belongs to Jesus. It's more than just our theology of what we have, it's the tangible feeling of knowing that's true. Romans 8:15-17 is a brilliant example of the two verses above as the Holy Spirit takes something that belongs to Jesus and declares that, by grace, we have it as well:

“…you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ”. 

Feeling adopted to the extent that you can't hold back a cry of, "Dad, loving Father!" is very different to just knowing that you're adopted. 


The Inevitable Consequence Of Enjoying God

Another example of what Jesus said in John 16:14, is when you're spending time with God and the Spirit starts to declare to you, animate within you, the truth that you have the same authority that Jesus has over sickness and darkness. One of the fruits of having a ‘time of refreshing’ is that it will increase your faith for miracles. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus tells us when we have faith we can tell a mountain to move and it will move. In the same way, Peter demonstrates in this account in Acts 3, that we can tell sickness to move in the name of Jesus.
So often I just 'humbly' ask God to heal the person that I'm praying for instead of using the authority that I have by grace. Perhaps this is a symptom of not having been recently refreshed! 


NB: This isn't like Harry Potter trying to recite the words to a complicated spell correctly... there's no formula here. It's just a big mysterious mush of God sometimes using us to heal people, sometimes healing without us, and sometimes receiving the glory in a different way. My point is that if you're having a bad day, and you haven't had a 'holy' time of refreshing in the morning, then you encounter someone who needs to be blessed, stop thinking about yourself and bless them.


A Quick Story To Illustrate
Yesterday, on Tuesday I woke up late and so didn't have a time of devotion and refreshing in the morning. After work I took some UHT milk to a guy who recently broke his leg and is really struggling. I asked if I could pray for him; he's not a Christian but he was more than happy for me to have a go. I put my hand on his cast and quickly told all the bones, ligaments and tissue to be made new in the name of Jesus. Nothing instant happened. 
Perhaps if I had made time to enjoy the blessing of God for myself yesterday, I might have had more faith, and that cast might have fallen off. Perhaps not. Perhaps God has more to show this guy in his debilitation, as the church cares for him in his need; and no matter how 'fired-up' and 'filled' I had been, he wouldn't have been healed there and then!

Conclusion
When our only aim is to enjoy God and we make time to enjoying thanking Him, praising Him and having the Spirit ignite things within us; then we can expect to bless others with what He has given us. Just think what a blessing the Crown Church can be to this community if people are regularly being healed and, as a result, enter into a lifetime of enjoying God for themselves! 
Let’s not restrict this to our meetings, let’s get out and about and expect to bring demonstrations and explanations of what it means to enjoy the living God!