Ja wateva

Had an interesting last few weeks, between leading the services at Church doing the childrens talks, (thankfully for the congregation not preaching ... much) doing the usual worship song and mission focus presentation, quite a few bicycle 'problems' flat tyres, bent hangers, slightly buckled rims not to mention running into a pedestrian this morning and needing 3 stitches on the bridge of my nose (bike is 100% though) and I'm not sure where the pedestrian went he was walking away rubbing the back of his head the last I saw him, I hope he's allright. Computers at work with failing hdd's and blown (lightning?) motherboards and network switches, corrupted pst files, the beginning of a software license evaluation, and audit of DRP and IT policies, new pbx installation to deal with too.

Hey ho it's all part of the fun, as usual the end of January birthdays in our family will probably be minimally celebrated, paying for my nose repair this morning swallowed any spare cash we might have had.
One good thing though I've somehow managed to consume a book or two that been sitting on my phone/tablet for a while and one paper book, and I'm currently working my way through John Pipers 50 Reasons Christ came to die and AW Pink's Divine covenants, and listening to a series of sermons by Kim Riddlebarger on eschatology

In all this apparent busyness some things have come to mind that I find concerning and that is the apparent lack to dedication in Christ's service that I see in my own life and of other christians around me. I say apparent because I don't know all the reasons but suspect that many of the reasons are just excuses that boil down to one serving oneself instead of God. I observe my own sinfulness and know that similar sins beset many of those around me, if I wasn't so involved in the services at Church I may have skipped some too out of pure laziness, and desiring to do the things I want to do, instead of desiring God and the good things He has for me. I'm not particularly close to the non immediate family around me, so maybe what I am about to say should be salted with that in mind, but it strikes me that all too often we fall into the track of family tradition and celebrations seeing them as more important than our service to our christian brethren, in other words we will skip church so we can have a party with friends and family who are not christians, we will be lazy all week when we should and could be working and suddenly panic on sunday night when we have to catch up on work needed for monday morning, and then skip church to do it. We indulge ourselves in sinful unhealthy addictions of many sorts and as a result become too ill or tired to serve as we should, or our sinful addictions cause illness in those around us and leading to unnecessary time and effort caring for these needs. I'm not saying that even when we don't indulge ourselves with these sinful 'pleasures' we will always be healthy, we live in a sinful and broken world, but we plan to fail when we continuously please ourselves with foolish unhealthy behaviour.  In addition we tend to spend way too much time on entertaining ourselves with activities like games, and watching unwholsome TV and a whole bunch of other things, instead of reading, meditating on, and praying through God's word and other books and media which can help us understand it. We make ourselves unprepared to defend our faith in this way, we lose out on oppurtunities because we are not confident in our understanding, or we lack knowledge. What is more is that many outside the church look in and see gluttonous, bad habited, complaining, ignorant, sometimes negative people in the church and want to have nothing to do with it.

I'm not judging anyone when I wonder how many 'holidays' Paul had while he was on his missionary journeys or chained to Roman guards, or being whipped and beaten numerous times, or how much leave did Peter have while he was feeding the sheep of Christ. Yes times have changed and we live in a different society, but I think we sometimes exaggerate the differences in order to feel less guilty about pleasing ourselves and not doing the work God has called us to, instead of witnessing on the beach, we lie on it, instead of visiting our families to share christ we visit them to revel. On the other hand it isn't any good hiding in the church and never spending time with family and friends and acquaintances sharing the good news, and being salt and light to them in our behaviour and our words. The christians of the first century turned the world on it's head, do we not have the same Holy Spirit of God in us. I think the main difference is we allow too much of us in us and not enough of Him in other words we show our weak and soft and scared selves instead of His strength, His solidness, and His power over all things..... we fail to surrender completely to Him.

If like me you find yourself described in some or all of the bad behaviour described above, allow me to beg of you as I battle with my own self, it doesn't have to stay that way, if you are a Christian you are in a process of sanctification, continually pray and ask God to change you and when (not if) He reveals the next step, take it in faith. All things work to the good for those that love the Lord. It only takes one simple decision and acting on it at a time to walk the path of righteousness, in the slogan of a famous brand of sports goods 'Just Do It'.

1 John 5:1-5

Overcoming the World
  1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.  4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.  5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

John here consolidates the themes of the last few chapters, with three evidences of our salvation.

Firstly in v1 he points out that if we are born of God we will believe in Jesus, belief that Jesus is the Christ means that we believe he is the only one who paid the penalty of our sin, we deserve eternal death, but instead the eternal became death for us. Note also that it is not the belief that comes first but the being born of God, if we are not reborn we cannot believe, this will bear itself out in love for the Father and for the Father’s children, again we cannot love the Father and his children without being born of him.

Following on from the first sign of belief, in v2-3 we see that we show our love for God and his children by obedience to his commandments, John reminds us that the commandments are not burdensome to those that are born of God.  The kind of love being spoken about here is not phileo which is comraderie, or eros which is that ‘in love’ emotive love, but rather agape which always works its way out in practical obedient action.

This leads into the next evidence in v4-5 which is that those who are born of God overcome the world through our faith which of course is given to us at our new birth in order that we may believe and love and overcome the world.

It is notable that these evidences do not stand on their own, but support and are inextricably bound together. We cannot believe and love without overcoming the world or the worldliness in us. We cannot love without believing and overcoming. We cannot overcome without belief and love for the Father and his children.

All three of these evidences are sourced on the fact of the new birth, none of them are truly possible unless we are first born of God, and that is an act of God, not something we can force by trying to act out the results, our love, belief, and overcoming of the worldly things around us will never bring us to God – they are descriptive of those who have already been brought to God, whilst we will flounder around in this world, the price has already been paid and the victory already won.

To state the above negatively: If we do not or cannot overcome the world and it’s worldly desires in the character of our life we do not have the new birth, if we do not love the Father and all his children we do not have the new birth, and if we do not have belief that Jesus is the Christ, we do not have the new birth.

A Christ mess-age

It’s with some trepidation that I start writing this message which is essentially a call to my family, friends, colleagues and anyone else who does not know Christ as their Lord and saviour. Some of you might think you do, but your lifestyle and lack of devotion to obedience of God reveals otherwise. Some of you are apathetic or uncaring about the importance of thinking about these things. Some of you are vehemently opposed to Christianity for various reasons, including but not limited to, abuse by many ‘christians’ of God’s commands to their own selfish and sinful ends,  biblical history does not match the ‘scientific facts’ ,  misunderstanding what the bible’s teaching really is, a misunderstanding or rejection of God purely because your own way is more palatable to you, your view of Christians (including me) is that they are narrow-minded, intolerant, perhaps even foolish or uninformed and there are many other objections.

I am not going to try to present an apologetic for the above reasons for rejection there are plenty of apologetics by people far more capable than me that can be read, John Blanchard, C.S. Lewis, Josh Mc Dowell, and R.C. Sproul come to mind but there are hundreds of other apologists. What I am going to do is what the bible tells me to do which is to share the message of the Gospel of Christ. I would like to say though that along the way of my life most of the above objections have, at one time or another, been held by me, some of them I have not yet found an acceptable answer to yet, but they pale to insignificance in light of the things that I believe are true. What I or any other created being understand about God is miniscule compared to what He truly is, you cannot define Him in space or time as He created those things, and as creatures also operating in that sphere it is impossible for us to grasp a complete understanding of Him, but we should nevertheless get to know as much as we can  from what He does reveal of His character in His creation and through His Word. On that note and because my beliefs are centered on the Word of God as presented in the book known as the Bible let me just say that the reason I believe it is essentially twofold. Firstly the words of this book present the best and most complete characterisation of humankinds nature of any other literature or explanation than I have ever come across. It does this in a way that is reflective of true life, every human hero, except for one, in the book is shown to have serious failings. Anyone who honestly examines themselves will admit that even in their own estimation they constantly fail themselves and those around them through what essentially boils down to selfishness and pride. Secondly it provides what I believe is the best explanation of why this is, and even better provides a solution that doesn’t depend on our frail imperfect attempts of redemption but on the work of an all-knowing perfect God.

My title is quite deliberate, because the message I’m sharing is Christ and it is Christmas (Christ mess) time (age). Also generally speaking we tend to mess up the message of Christ. Christmas is of course the time of year we celebrate the birth of Jesus even though in reality He was not born on Dec 25, that date was chosen to try to Christianize a pagan celebration that occurred that time of year, an act that was in my view unnecessary however it has become a time of year when many people are in a reflective or good will mood so I will make use of the opportunity it provides. I will just add though that in truth we should celebrate Christ and use every opportunity to share the message every day.

Okay I admit also the title comes a bit from my weird sense of humour.

So why share the message of Christ, well to put it simply, wide is the way to destruction and many there are that are on that path, narrow is the way to salvation and few there are that enter that way. It is not the case that I think I’m right and you are wrong and therefore I must force my view on you, it is the case that I think you may be on the way to destruction,and I want to rescue you. What kind of person sees their blinded friend walking towards a cliff and doesn’t try to stop them. What kind of parent sees a determined child putting their hand in a fire and doesn’t try everything to stop them. On the other hand you may be thinking there might be more than one way to be saved, well Jesus himself said ‘I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me’ . You may be thinking that you are not so bad and you aren’t heading towards that destruction sorry.. ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, or maybe you ‘know in your heart’ that your way is the right way sorry again… ‘the heart is deceitful above all things’ the first thing our sinful hearts deceive is ourselves. Jesus tells us that ‘on that day, many will come to me and say Lord, Lord did we not…..’ note these are people who think they have the right answer, they even correctly call Jesus Lord recognising Him as God, they even did things in his name, even casting out demons, but yet he says to these ‘depart from me I never knew you’. The essential mistake these people made was that though they recognised Him for who He is they thought they could get to heaven, or eternal life, by earning their way through their own works. What they needed to do was recognise their total inadequacy and trust the redemptive sacrifice of the only holy scapegoat man who took the punishment of our sin for us. By the way the only reason that He was the only truly holy man is because He was also God, I cannot pretend to completely understand how that could be, as I said earlier we live inside this ‘box’ that God created and we cannot fully comprehend Him, nor how or why He does the things He does. Jesus was not an angel, He accepted the praise and worship due to God, something which when prophets and apostles did to angels the angel concerned rebuked the man and told him to worship God and not angels.

Now in case you missed it among the rhetoric above here is a rewording. God is a perfect being outside of time and space who created us for His own purpose which we cannot completely comprehend. The nature of God’s character which is holiness actively results in anything unholy being put into a state of destruction. Man although created holy had the ability to choose to obey or disobey God, in being convinced that he could become like God chose to disobey and in that act became unholy, and therefore doomed to destruction. God is just and cannot allow this sin to go unpunished, but solved the problem himself by taking on the punishment in the person of His one and only Son who is also fully God (again something we cannot properly comprehend that God is three persons but also one person i.e. His person is multidimensional beyond the dimensions of time and space that we can comprehend). Only by accepting that His work alone is sufficient to be the punishment for our sin can we be saved. This acceptance and resulting trust is something that in our own strength we are incapable of, and so the third person of the trinity is sent to indwell us giving us His strength so that His work will become complete in us. The reason we are still imperfect as Christians is because we now have two natures our sinful nature and our Holy Spirit, Christ blood bought, Father sent nature, in a sense we are still able to disobey and we do, but in the end our sinful nature will be defeated and we will have full communion with God.

A few last things, the destruction I mentioned above is not a once off destruction and then there is nothing kind of destruction, it is an everlasting destruction, part of which is the recognition of your unholiness in the burning everlasting light of God’s holiness. The acceptance mentioned above is not a once off acceptance, if it is real it will be an acceptance and trust that endures past your physical death. How do you know that your acceptance and trust is real? You can know it is real when you are living a life devoted to the aim of joy in obedience to God’s design for you, recognising your own inability to accomplish this goal and trusting God to complete the work in you. This simple statement is fleshed out more in scripture … go digging.

All of this is said knowing that many will reject it but I have to do my utmost and be true to what I believe and steer  those headed towards destruction away from it. What else should one who truly loves do?

Jerm the Worm

I’m me Jeremy David Pointer or Jerm for short, of course there’s more to me than anything I may say in this short introduction, but I was born on 30 Jan 1969 in Preston, Lancashire, England my family moved to South Africa in 1974 where I have grown up and currently reside. I am Married to Ria (Mary-Anne but don’t tell her I said so) and have two Children, Kevin and Abigail J. My main interests are three C’s: Christianity, Computers and Cycling.

I am not sure why it took me so long to start a blog, but probably because I’m way to busy doing other things, and up till now facebook has sufficed to share what I wanted to share, don’t expect a flurry of posts from me but let’s just see how it goes.

There is a little bit of verse regarding my nick name (I’m not the only Jerm around many Jeremy’s have their name shortened this way, and there a a few others who are also called Jermworm or Jerm the Worm but as far as I know I’m the only one with ‘poetry’ attached):
Jerm The Worm
likes to squiggle and squirm
and wriggle all over the floor
when it’s time for bed
he flattens his head
and squeezes under the door