Abba Father - Thank You...

 

Thank You Father

To be thankful for what we have been given, we say if we don't work, we do not deserve to eat. This is a biblical truth.

The Apostle Paul wrote:

"The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."

(2 Thessalonians 3:10)

But strip everything down and we will soon understand that without God's mercy we would not exist. We need oxygen to survive. He has given that to all, the sinner and the saint. A habitable planet for us to thrive in. See Genesis 1.

People love to ask, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The answer is obvious. God created. Then came the cycle of life. The chicken and then the egg. What has become a favourite philosophical question is not nearly as complicated as many would like to believe.

We could spend pages unpacking the grace of God in our lives. That is common grace I refer to, the grace everyone receives. How often are we intentionally thankful?

What I find remarkable is how quickly mankind forgets this. We celebrate our intelligence, our technology and our achievements, and in doing so often begin to think far more highly of ourselves than we ought. Some speak as though the future of creation ultimately rests in human hands, as though God's purposes could somehow be overturned by the actions of man.

Think about that for a moment. The God who spoke light into existence, who separated land from sea, who set the stars in their place and ordained the seasons, is somehow expected to sit helplessly by while His creation slips beyond His control?

This is not an excuse for careless stewardship. We should care for what God has entrusted to us. But let us never imagine that the Creator is dependent upon the creation, or that human failure can somehow derail the sovereign plans of Almighty God. The earth remains His, the heavens remain His, and history continues to unfold according to His purposes, not ours.

These days it seems fashionable to blame previous generations for everything. One would think mankind has the power to bring creation to its knees and cause God's plans to unravel. Really? The same God who spoke the universe into existence is somehow at the mercy of human beings? Such thinking gives mankind far too much credit and God far too little glory.

We honour God for who He is, but do we thank Him for what He has done, or do we sit with the scoffer and moan about our lot in life? It's never good enough. We always want more. If so, we are moving backwards away from the Light instead of towards that majestic Light, from His brilliance.

I don't know how else to describe God but brilliant in all His brilliance.

Think about it.

The ability to speak into the darkness and create light, wow!

Think about what Genesis records:

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

(Genesis 1:3)

Let that resonate.

And many stand on the precipice of life, giving God advice, really!

And then with the billions of people on the planet, somewhere along my journey He called me by name and opened my eyes to the reality of His existence. Then to come to a place of understanding that JESUS SAVES is absolutely mind boggling.

This leaves me with one declaration only.

Thank You Father, in the mighty name of Jesus.

Where do you stand on this topic? Only you can answer this. As for me, I am grateful. In spite of my many failures, my sins, my foolishness and the countless times I have gone my own way instead of His, I am truly thankful for all that God has done in my life.

Signing off,

Tyrone

Reflections

Reflections Over the Years

Part One: The Awakening

Over the past few months, I have been working through years of archived blog posts as part of a book project. In doing so, I have found myself revisiting seasons of my life that I had almost forgotten.

Reading those old posts has been a strange experience.

Some made me smile. Some made me cringe. Some reminded me how little I understood at the time. Others reminded me of lessons that God is still teaching me today.

What has stood out most is not the writing itself. It is seeing the fingerprints of God throughout the journey.

When many of those posts were written, I had no idea where the road ahead would lead. I was simply writing about what I was learning, what I was struggling with, what I was observing, and what I believed God was showing me at the time.

Looking back now, I can see that God was doing far more beneath the surface than I realised.

At the time, many of life's events seemed disconnected. There were victories and failures, seasons of growth and seasons of frustration. There were prayers that seemed unanswered and lessons that kept repeating themselves.

Yet looking back through the years, I can see a thread running through it all.

The Lord was patiently renewing my mind.

Not overnight.

Not through one dramatic moment.

But through years of correction, conviction, grace, failure, repentance, and growth.

One lesson in particular keeps appearing throughout the journey.

Jesus said:

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:33

For many years, I focused more on the second half of that verse than the first. Like many believers, I was often looking at what God might provide, what He might do, or how He might answer prayer.

Over time, however, the Lord began teaching me that the greater pursuit was His righteousness.

That lesson has surfaced again and again throughout these writings. I certainly cannot claim to have mastered it. It remains a lesson I am still learning.

The same can be said of the renewing of the mind.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Romans 12:2

That renewing was never a destination I reached. It was a process that continues today. Looking back through these posts, I can see moments where God was exposing wrong thinking, challenging old habits, teaching dependence upon Him, and slowly reshaping my priorities.

The encouraging thing is not how much I have changed.

The encouraging thing is how faithful God has been.

As I revisit these early writings, I am reminded that while I was often focused on what God was doing around me, He was quietly doing His greatest work within me.

If these reflections serve any purpose beyond recording my own journey, I hope they encourage others to pause occasionally and look back on their own lives. Sometimes only in looking back do we begin to recognise the faithfulness of God that was present all along.

What follows are some of the earliest steps in that journey.

Not the reflections of someone who had arrived.

Simply the observations of a pilgrim learning, stumbling, growing, and discovering that God's faithfulness is greater than his own strength.

Signing off,

Tyrone

 

Hallowed Be Your Name

 

I Lift My Voice Unto Your Name

The very first instruction is to pay homage to God and honour Him for who He is. We need to worship Him for who He is, period.

Thankfully, He is the God He is, full of light, with no darkness overshadowing His light. There is no blemish in Him whatsoever, nothing flawed in His character. He always makes the right decisions, even if at times we, as fallen sinners, find some things difficult to reconcile.

The Lord Himself taught us this principle when the disciples asked Him how they should pray. Before provision, before forgiveness, before protection, He directed their attention to God:

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."  

Matthew 6:9

The very first instruction is not about us. It is about Him. His name, His honour, His glory. How different that is from our natural inclination. We rush into God's presence with our lists, our concerns, our needs, and our plans. Yet Christ starts somewhere entirely different. He starts with worship.

Remember, when we learn this lesson for ourselves, and it absolutely resonates, not partially but completely, it will leave us in good standing with our God. For now, our summations are outside His perfect will. The only time we will ever align with His will is once saved, born again. This is where it starts. Outside of that reality, it is impossible to please Him.

You may think you please Him through charitable deeds, but when you examine it closely, you will often find that you are doing it to be recognised by others. Our lives are filled with smoke screens. That is why I find Solomon's summation and conclusion at the end of Ecclesiastes so fascinating:

"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

As long as you are trying to evade this reality in your life, eternity will not end well for you.

Romans 1 takes this discussion even further. Paul traces mankind's decline and identifies the root problem. It was not merely that men sinned. It was that they refused to honour God as God.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." Romans 1:21

The judgment that follows begins there. A refusal to acknowledge God for who He is. A refusal to honour Him. A refusal to give thanks. God eventually gives them over to their own desires and imaginations. It is a sobering passage of Scripture because it reveals what happens when mankind refuses to do the very thing Christ taught us from the outset: to honour God.

If you apply yourself to the Word, He will apply Himself to you. More specifically, your faith in Him will produce evidence in your life.

Of this I am completely persuaded.

There are many contributing factors to this reality, including God's intervention in saving faith. If you believe, for one minute, that you are better than the unbeliever because you chose to bend the knee to God, and somewhere along your journey you were "born again" and believe it was all your doing, then I fear for you. Without God's intervention, even in that account, nothing would have changed in your life.

The nagging question is what triggers that in a person's life. These are some of the unseen mysteries that we are privy to. To start speaking on God's behalf with any authority is dangerous.

Remember Miriam?

Recount the time when God called you by name. I remember wrestling for days to understand who God was and what He had done for me. But I have seen it in the lives of others. Jukes, a very good friend of mine, resisted the call so furiously that he arrived at a meeting, refused to get out of his car, turned around to drive away, and had an accident. I think that was the first car accident he had in his life. Now, you explain that for me, coincidence or God tightening the screws to bring you to a place of understanding?

Now back to the starting point of our daily routine. When I rise, the very first words out of my mouth should be:

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:9-10

And then we work out the rest of the day.

This is my encouragement to you, whilst reaffirming this truth in my own life.

Signing off,

Tyrone

 

The Pathway to Peace

 

Be Anxious For Nothing

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7

 "Be anxious for nothing" is another bitter pill to swallow, but once again, what happens in the mind is that the instant reflex is to tell yourself to stop worrying and start applying faith to your circumstances. But is that what the Word actually teaches?

 When we read, "Be anxious for nothing," our natural tendency is to focus on the anxiety itself. We begin wrestling with our thoughts, trying to suppress fear, silence worry, and convince ourselves to have more faith. The battle becomes an exhausting attempt to control the mind through sheer determination.

Yet that is not what Paul says. 

He does not tell us to fight anxiety directly. He does not tell us to manufacture faith or pretend that our concerns do not exist. Instead, he immediately redirects our attention elsewhere:

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."

The focus is not on anxiety. The focus is on bringing everything to God.

Perhaps the mistake many of us make is believing that victory comes from staring at the problem in our minds until faith somehow appears. The Scripture points us in a different direction. Rather than becoming occupied with our anxiety, we are invited to become occupied with prayer. Rather than rehearsing our fears, we are instructed to make our requests known to God. Rather than dwelling on what may happen tomorrow, we are called to remember with thanksgiving what God has already done. 

The peace of God is not presented as a reward for successfully eliminating anxiety. Neither is it reserved for those who have achieved perfect faith. In Paul's instruction, peace comes after something else. It follows prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and the deliberate act of bringing our concerns before God.

That changes the picture completely.

Many believers spend countless hours trying to silence anxious thoughts, believing peace will come only when they finally conquer them. Yet Paul points us in a different direction. He does not tell us to conquer anxiety. He tells us to bring everything to God in prayer. The emphasis is not on mastering the mind but on surrendering it. The mind may still be full of questions. The circumstances may remain unchanged. The future may still be uncertain. Yet as those burdens are repeatedly brought to the Lord, something begins to happen that cannot be fully explained.

"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

This peace does not always make sense. It often arrives before the answer. It can be present even as the storm rages and before a single circumstance has improved. That is why it surpasses understanding. It is not rooted in what we can see, calculate, or control. It is rooted in the presence of God Himself.

Perhaps this is where many of us miss the lesson. We try to think our way to peace when God calls us to pray our way to peace. We attempt to reason our way out of anxiety when God invites us to bring our anxiety to Him. The promise is not that we will always respond to our wants. The promise is that God will guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

It is not the power of the mind that brings peace, but the surrender of the mind to our God and Father through Jesus Christ. 

I hope you are beginning to see the difference between applying the Word of God and following the world's methods. The world teaches self-mastery. It teaches techniques to control thoughts, manage emotions, and train the mind to submission. Whether through self-help, positive thinking, or countless other methods, the focus remains the same: self-attempting to fix self.

The problem is that “self” is the very thing that is broken.

The Bible paints a completely different picture of man. We are not merely people who need better techniques. We are fallen creatures with a sinful nature. Every one of us has been trained by sin from birth. Left to ourselves, our minds naturally drift toward fear, pride, doubt, anxiety, lust, anger, and countless other corruptions. The mind is not the solution to the problem. The mind is part of the problem. 

This is why Scripture does not call us to trust in ourselves. It calls us to trust in Christ.

You will never achieve lasting victory through the strength of your own mind because your mind, like mine and every other human mind, has been affected by sin. There has only ever been ONE who was not conquered by sin. Only ONE walked this earth in complete obedience to the Father. Only ONE remained perfectly pure in thought, word, and deed.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man.

The Christian life is therefore not a journey of self-improvement but one of surrender. We stop looking inward for the answer and begin looking unto Jesus. We stop placing confidence in our own ability to control our thoughts and begin bringing those thoughts captive to Christ. We stop trusting in the strength of self and start depending upon the power of God.

That is why the peace of God is found at the end of prayer. Prayer is an act of surrender. It is the acknowledgement that I cannot carry this burden, solve this problem, or control this outcome. I place it in the hands of the One who can.

The destination is not simply a quieter mind. The destination is the peace of God, and the road that leads there is travelled on our knees.

 

Signing off,

Tyrone

As For Me, I Have Made Up My Mind

 

The Mind

The mind continues to be at play, ticking over nonstop, consistently spilling thoughts. Sometimes it appears to be under lock and key, whilst at other times it rages like a burning furnace. Thoughts emerge seemingly without invitation, some useful, some destructive, some confusing, and some that simply refuse to leave. Most of us rarely stop long enough to consider what is taking place. We simply roll with the punches and continue on with life. Thoughts come, thoughts go, and before long, we find ourselves reacting to them rather than examining them.

To be fair, there has been much discussion in recent years concerning the mind. Therapy has become a major topic. People are searching for answers to anxiety, fear, confusion, and the endless activity taking place within them. Yet where is the Christian to go with this realisation?

The answer, as always, is found in the Word of God.

At first glance, it may appear as though we are merely spectators to our thoughts, helpless passengers being carried along wherever the mind chooses to travel. Yet the Scriptures reveal something much deeper than that. James 1:15 says, "Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death."

There it is.

The Word of God pulls back the curtain and allows us to see what is taking place beneath the surface. The issue is not simply the thoughts that enter our minds. The issue is the source of those thoughts. Desire conceives. Sin is born. Sin grows. Death follows. What eventually manifests itself in our thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions often begins much deeper within the heart. The Scriptures expose what lies beneath the surface and, in doing so, reveal why the Christian must look beyond symptoms and seek the root of the problem.

This is one of the reasons I have become so convinced about the importance of the Word of God. If I achieve nothing else in this life, if I can lead you to the Word of God, then I will have accomplished at least part of my calling. I have many failings and shortcomings, but if the Word of God gains dominance in your life as the final authority, then I would be well pleased.

As for me, I have made up my mind. By the grace of God, I will rely upon God's Word, the Bible, as the final authority for my life. Working this out can be difficult at times because applying Scripture to life's countless circumstances is not always straightforward. There have been many occasions where I have struggled to know what to do, what direction to take, or how to apply God's truth to a particular situation. Yet through the years, I have discovered something that has become increasingly precious to me. If I sit long enough, wait upon the Lord, search His Word, and sincerely seek His will, direction always comes. Not always in my timing and not always in the manner I expected, but it comes because God is faithful.

The Lord Himself said in Luke 11:9, "And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

Almost immediately, the mind begins to object. If that is true, why have I asked and not received? Why have I sought and not found? Why have I knocked and found no door opening before me? Again, the answer is found in the Word of God. James 4:3 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."

The problem is not God's faithfulness. The problem is often our own desires. We can ask for things that originate in our will, whilst convincing ourselves that we are seeking God's will. The Christian life, therefore, becomes a process of learning not merely to ask, but to ask rightly. Not merely to seek, but to seek those things that align with the will of God. Not merely to knock, but to knock upon the doors that God desires to open.

The more I walk with the Lord, the more I find myself asking a different question. Instead of asking, "What do I want?" I find myself asking, "Does this request fall within the perfect will of God the Father?" That question changes everything. It changes the way we pray, the way we think, and ultimately the direction of our lives.

Ask yourself this question: Is this a request that falls under the perfect will of God the Father?

Shoot high, as the sniper would say, aim small, miss small.

If our aim is the will of God rather than our own desires, we may be surprised at how often the answers begin to come into focus. The issue has never been God's faithfulness. The issue is whether we are seeking what He desires for us.

The mind will continue its activity until the day we leave this world. Thoughts will continue to come and go, and questions will continue to arise. Yet I am convinced that God has not left us without an answer. He has given us His Word. His Word exposes the source of the problem. His Word establishes the final authority. His Word teaches us how to seek, and His Word reveals the faithfulness of God toward those who diligently seek Him.

Of this I am convinced.

Signing off,

Tyrone