GOD IS NOT AGAINST US

God is love, – 1Jn 4:8

One core reason Atheists cite for their antagonism to God is that they find it totally incomprehensible to believe in a God that would punish anyone in Hell.

Firstly, one is tempted to wonder how this ostrich-head-in-sand approach actually solves their ‘God’ problem considering that NOT believing in said God does not automatically cause Him to cease to exist!

But much more importantly, it is saddening that they do not see the unfortunate irony of their stand.

2Pe 3:9 tells us “The Lord is... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And Jesus made it clear that Hell was not made for man but “for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41)

John tells us that “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (Jn 3:17).

The punishment for Man’s sins is the Cross. On it, Jesus took all the consequences of our rebellion against our Creator, (Jn 3:16).

This is why it is unfortunate that these Atheists, God-deniers and God-haters would allow the Devil to deceive them into eternal perdition by twisting the image of the very God that has reached out to them in the Person of Christ.

God is not the problem, God is the solution; God is not out to get us, on the contrary He’s gone all-out to save us. It’s not a ‘God’ issue, it’s a ‘SIN’ issue. Our sin: our arrogance, obstinacy and pride is what is sending us to Hell, not God.

If God were a sadistic and wicked being, there'll be absolutely NOTHING that we can do about it.

But thank God for God, He loves us so much, that He upon Himself the consequences of our rebellion, so that now we can have eternal fellowship with Him.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

IS YOUR GOD PHILOSOPHICAL OR REAL?

Know ye that the LORD He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves... – Ps 100:3

“God” is the name we humans give to the Creator of the Universe. But it’s important we know too that “God” is also a philosophically essential construct of the human mind. Man is a thinking creature, and every man has an idea of what “God” is like... or should be like.

This shouldn’t be an issue, as long as we don’t mix up the weak constructs of our finite minds with the real GOD in Heaven.

Do we make this distinction in reality? Unfortunately, no. Even among Christians, not only do we conflate these two ‘God’s, (the one in our minds, and the One up in Heaven), we often insist on dealing with the former and reject/ignore the later.

As an example, think of the lying ‘God’ that the Positive Confession preacher preaches about, (“God can call something white, even though it’s black”). Or what about the not-so-omnipotent God (limited by human ‘freewill’) that some modern theologians are talking about now? And let’s not forget the silliest of them all, the “God” of the Atheist , who – because HE doesn’t fit their definition of what a ‘God’ should be like, thus doesn’t exist!

But beyond the open realms of intellectual discuss, we too sometimes have our personal Gods: made out of our own construct. We all have our picture of what God is like. These pictures are shaped by a combination of our cultures, upbringing, education, mindset and other factors.

From the hard-hearted God that rules His children with pain and torture, to the sweet, happy-go-lucky God that would never really judge sinners in Hell forever, etc. we may be worshipping the true God, yet relating with Him based on the mental ‘God’ we have in our minds.

Here’s Paul’s message to each of us guilty of this: “Though God has overlooked those times of ignorance, He now commands everyone everywhere to repent,” (Act 17:30 ISV).

The REAL God has revealed Himself and His character in the Bible. Whenever you read it and stumble upon an aspect of His nature that doesn’t line up with the image in your mind, have the courage, as Paul says, to REPENT (i.e. change your mind).

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

BENEFICIAL IGNORANCE

Knowledge puffeth up... – 1Co 8:1

One of the tragedies of this so-called age of ‘intellectualism’ and ‘enlightenment’ is the prideful presumption that Man knows all that there is to know about all truth.

Even as Believers, we can get so familiar with God that we begin to needlessly conclude what can and cannot happen in our lives.

But sometimes, a little ‘ignorance’ about God can go a long way. If you check the Scriptures, you’ll find that great feats of faith that were performed by gentiles, or else those who had no covenant relationship with Yahweh was because of their ‘ignorance’ of His limitations.

Take, for example, the naivety of Abraham in blindly obeying God’s instruction to sacrifice Isaac. From Heb 11:19 we now know that he did it because He was ‘unaware’ that sacrificed persons DON’T come back to life!

Or what about the spiritual illiteracy of the Centurion in Mat 8:5-13 who didn’t know that Jesus ‘needed’ to be physically present for his servant to be healed.

We also need a little ‘ignorance’ of whom God can and cannot use. Because of our perfect, churchified knowledge of God, we have disqualified ourselves and others from being used mightily by God in His kingdom.

We may know that God used Abraham, Moses and Rahab; but we also “know’ that God would NEVER use an idol-worshiper, murderer or prostitute today, which is what they actually were.

Beloved, is your ‘knowledge’ hindering the flow of God’s power in your life? Have you created arbitrary prerequisites for God’s goodness, power and greatness in your life? I personally know at least two different persons who raised dead bodies to life because they didn’t KNOW the person was dead (they thought they were just sick)!

But beyond dead bodies, how about that delayed BIG miracle you’re trusting God for? Are you being too knowledgeable of the details involved for it to come to pass? The ‘ignorant’ centurion told Jesus to “speak the word only”, the ‘knowledgeable’ ruler of the synagogue, however, insisted, “come and lay your hand upon her, and she shall live;” (Mat 9:18).

It’s all the same to Jesus. He says, “ACCORDING TO YOUR FAITH BE IT UNTO YOU” (Mat 9:29).

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

GOD-MORE CHRISTIANITY

Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let thy glory be above all the earth., – Ps 57:11

At an official height of 8,848 meters above sea level, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. It was identified as such only in 1852 by Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian surveyor, using trigonometric calculations from geological survey data.

Do you know what the tallest mountain in the world was before 1852? That’s a trick question that many persons, even geographers, fall for. No, it wasn’t “Mount Kangchenjunga”. The tallest mountain in the world before 1852 was – and has always been – “Mount Everest”!

That people did not go to the icy wilderness of the Tibet/Nepal region until the 1800s to measure it did not make it “shorter” than other known tall mountain. It was just as tall all the while. Our ignorance of its height and majesty takes nothing from it.

This is also very true of God Almighty. We can sit in our armchairs and philosophically put Him in a bottle; explaining what He can and cannot do, who He can and cannot be, and all what not. But that doesn’t change who He is: our ignorance of His glory and majesty takes nothing from Him.

Nevertheless, it does take a lot from us. Because what we can rightly demand from God is intrinsically tied to what we believe He is and what we believe HE can do for us.

When the Psalmist says “O magnify the LORD with me” (Ps 34:3), he isn’t asking us to make God bigger than He actually is; he’s only asking us to join him in declaring God’s greatness in ever increasing ways.

This is the essence of worship. If the God you worship is a BIG God, you can trust Him to do BIG things for you, but if you have, inadvertently, reduced Him in your eyes, then you limit what you can get from Him. For “without faith it is impossible to please God”, (Heb 11:6).

Make a decision today, to “Magnify” your God. Because now, as ever, we need God MORE in our lives.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

GOD-LESS CHRISTIANITY

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, – 2Ti 3:5

The 17^th century French atheist Voltaire once wrote, “If God made us in His image, we have certainly returned the compliment.”

Think about that; even Apostle Paul pointed out that Mankind has “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator’!” (Rom 1:25 AMP). Looking at all of the World’s Religions, we see various convenient ‘God’s created by Man and for man.

This man-created ‘God’ is creepily creeping even into Christianity. Because rebellious Man naturally is averse to dealing with things beyond his control and beyond his total comprehension.

This encroachment of (what I call) “God-less” Christianity is not necessarily heretic or demonic per say; it’s just distinguished by its tendency to give God less and less powers and less and less roles to play in our lives.

We now have books, philosophies and theologies on how to find the right spouse, how to grow up a ministry, how to serve the community and indeed, how to succeed in life.

There are “rules”, “steps”, and “laws”; “principles”, “protocols” and “procedures”. Everything you need is at your fingertips and your destiny is, literally, IN YOUR HANDS (heard that phrase lately?) 

This God-lessness that minimises the amount of time you need to spend in prayer, this God-lessness that substitutes casting out demons in the name of Jesus for therapy, this God-lessness that quotes equally from both the sacred scriptures and from secular self-help books... is raising a generation of Believers who may be godly but are not intimate with the God of the Bible.

Who are the losers in this modernised, revisionist form of Christianity? US, and us alone. God’s glory isn’t diminished by our faithlesssness, 2Ti 2:13 says “If we believe not, yet He abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself.”

So, what does your God look like? Is He the Almighty God of the Bible, or something a notch lesser?  “Be zealous therefore”, Jesus says, “and repent.” (Rev 3:19).

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

YOUR SEED WILL SPEAK FOR YOU

“Give, and it shall be given unto you,”  – Luk 6:38

A terrible thing a farmer can do to his planted seed is to dig it up every morning to “see how far it’s growing”. That seed will never grow, and indeed will die soon enough. This is also true of spiritual seeds that we plant.

In the Parable of the Growing Seed (Mk 4:26-29) our Lord says “the kingdom of God is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it.

“The seed sprouts and grows – he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help... As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Oftentimes, we’re tempted to worry about the results of the ‘seeds’ we have planted over the years: offerings, hospitality, sacrifices, Kingdom services, etc. But that said worry is tantamount to digging up your seed every morning.

The singular act of the “Shunamite Woman” taking it upon herself to bless Elisha the Prophet constituted a spiritual seed that went into the ground.

But notice that she didn’t determine what the fruit of the ‘seed’ was. 1Cor 15:38 says God gives each seed its own proper body, (GNB). When we try to determine the fruit of our seeds, we place a limit to what God can do with it.

But see the Shunamite Woman; even after she and Elisha had parted ways, and it seemed she had reaped all the fruits of her labours, her seed kept speaking for her. She received a forewarning about a famine and when she returned seven years later, she had all her lost properties returned to her just because God caused her to be at the right place, at the right time, (2Kgs 8:5,56).

You don’t have to worry over the seeds you’ve sown over the years; in Lk 10:2 Jesus called God “The Lord of the Harvest”; and Paul says God’s the One who gives the increase to anything sown (1Co 3:7). Like Paul admonished in Gal 6:9, let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which you have showed toward his name, (Heb 6:10).

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

IT IS WELL, REALLY

...according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;  – 2Co 4:13

You may well be aware of the cynicism and jest attached to the “It is well” phrase among Christians today. Nevertheless, isn’t it really well?

When the “Shunamite Woman” spoke those words to her husband and also to Elisha’s servant, was she lying? No, she wasn’t, because it really was well. She knew, just as the woman with the issue of blood knew of Jesus (Mk 5:28), that if she could just get to the Prophet everything would be well.

When we share our problems with a fellow Believer and they reply that “It is well”, it may sound like cold comfort. Maybe we feel they should have dipped their hands into their pockets, or make a phone call or provide us with some succour of sorts; but that response has more power than we can imagine.

Now, note that scripture does condemn Believers who respond to brethren’s needs with just words (Jas 2:15,16), but this is something deeper.

Yes, they may leave you empty-handed but their words should be a reminder to you that it really is well. The power isn’t hinged on the speaker, it’s anchored in scripture; it’s backed by the One who literally watches over His word to perform it, Jehovah Himself (Jer 1:12).

And just in case you haven’t heard anyone say it to you lately, permit me to give voice to what is already entrenched in God’s Word and say straight to you that “IT IS WELL!”

Not in some metaphoric, figurative sense, but directly and literally, I want you to know that IT IS WELL.

It is well with your Finances and your Family,

It is well with your Ministry and your Marriage,

It is well with your Mind and your Money,

It is well with your Transportation and your Accommodation,

It is well with your Today and It is well with your Tomorrow.

Don’t let the Devil tell you otherwise, regardless of the picture he’s trying to paint about your situation, have the courage and conviction like the Shunamite Woman to declare to yourself, “IT IS WELL”.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

THE ‘WELL’ WE HAVE ALL FALLEN INTO

“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent,”  – Rev 2:5

Isn’t it unfortunate that the phrase, “It is well” has lost the faith-inducing power it used to have among the body of Believers a few decades ago?

In former days, when a Believer tells his Brother, “It is well”, he was echoing the answer given by the Shunamite woman (2Ki 4:26) when asked about her state.

She had just lost her son under strange circumstances and was heading straight to the Prophet. She didn’t panic, she didn’t wail; even her husband wasn’t told that her son – HIS only son – was dead. Instead she told him that “it shall be well”.

What boldness, what powerful expression of faith, what level of conviction. All these are totally lacking when we say the same phrase today.

Even more unfortunate is the response we now hear Christians give to the phrase. When you say that “It is well”, they’d giggle and reply “Even inside the well”.

Need I say that the only victim of this crass trivialisation of the word of God is us. A woman living three millennia ago used that phrase to bring back her dead son to life; we instead use the same phrase as conversation filler as we talk on mundane things.

Beloved, we are not like the secular, unbelieving world; we are a people of FAITH, a people of passionate hope and power. Let’s bring back the conviction into our words. Let’s Remember therefore from where we have fallen, and repent.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

Which Came First: The Chicken or the “Seed”?

“Now...concerning Giving and Receiving...” – Php 4:15

We may never be able to know what prompted the Shunamite woman to offer to take care of Elisha the prophet. Nevertheless, one thing we can be sure of is that, contrary to what fund-raising preachers are wont to declare, it wasn’t because “she needed a miracle.”

She may have been childless, but all evidence shows she had accepted her fate. She never hinted to the prophet that she needed anything in return for her hospitality, and when asked directly by Elisha, she still claimed she had no need. Even after the prophet offered the blessing of a child, her maintained scepticism indicates her mind never went that way.

However, was her life bettered by her decision to honour the prophet? Undoubtedly YES! She supernaturally got a child against all biological odds, miraculously got same boy resurrected years later, and even after Elisha’s death, the legacy of her hospitality brought her the full restoration of ALL her lost properties. Giving does pay.

“Give,” our Lord says, “and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom,” (Lk 6:38).

There’s always a reward for giving to God, honouring his servant, or simply being a blessing to others. The problem only arises when our giving is done not because we want to BLESS but because we want to GET.

It is unfortunate that Christians would only give to the pastor who cajoules them with some fantastic reward. The same people who would empty their bank accounts to give a “heaven-provoking SEED” to a strange man of God would never think upon themselves to buy simple groceries for their local pastor.

This is a key lesson we must learn from the Shunamite woman. She saw a basic need of the itinerant prophet, and sought to be of help in whatever little way she could.

Start today... “and your Father who sees in secret Himself shall reward you openly.” (Mt 6:4)

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

LESSONS – AND BLESSINGS – FROM SHUNEM

And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where there was a wealthy woman; and she urged him to eat some food...  – 2Ki 4:8

The Old Testament (OT) isn’t “big for nothing”; it’s BIG for a reason. A whopping 77% of the words in the Bible are to be found in the OT. It may seem like it’s nothing but a bunch of endless genealogies, obscure rituals, strange histories and even stranger prophecies; but every single detail therein is there for a reason.

Rom 15:4 tells us that “whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

Even the circumstances surrounding the lives of the characters were designed for them to be a lesson for us in the church age, (1Co 10:11).

One of such characters, from which we can learn a great deal, is that well-known woman from the city of Shunem.

A descendant of the tribe of Issachar who lived some 2,800 years ago, the “Shunamite Woman” has several lessons to teach us. Like hospitality (she singlehandedly volunteered to cater for Elisha the prophet), humility (she was a wealthy woman who could have snubbed the shabby-looking farmer-turned-prophet Elisha), virtuousness (even as a hostess, she maintained her boundaries with the prophet) and, yes, FAITH (she is the one who coined the now famous phrase: “It is Well”, even in the midst of a tragedy).

And those are just the bullet points in her life, her story holds so much more. The OT stories form a treasure trove of rich, relevant truths for us all. Read the story of ‘the Woman from Shunem’ again, (2Kings 4:8-37 and 8:1-6), and see what lessons – and blessings – hers has for you.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN