The Father Himself Loves You

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? – Rom 8:32

The flaw of Marian veneration in prayer (Ave Maria), as noble as it seems, is that it reduces the scope of God’s love and presents Him as unapproachable and implacable.

The scriptures say in Gal 5:6 that “faith works by love.” The power of your faith is directly related to your revelation of how much God loves you. If you see God as hard to convince in prayer, then you’ll find it difficult to receive from Him.

Nevertheless, when you remember that Jesus we should not wait for someone else to approach God on our behalf because “the Father Himself loves you” (John 16:26-27); when you remember that God loved you so much that He did not spare His one and only Son just to get you back to Himself, (John 3:16; Rom 8:32); Then when you pray, you’ll pray with confidence, hope and expectation.

You don’t need anybody or anything to beg God on your behalf; the Father Himself loves you. Let your faith work by that love.

Halleluiah!!!

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

GREG ELKAN

Is God Moved By Your Faith?

Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. – Php 4:5

The whole purpose of this, admittedly unpalatable Ave Pistoria series is to create a healthy balance in our theology. The messages may sound like hypercorrection, but they’re instigated by observation of a curve in our theology that began harmlessly but is fast corrupting the simple Gospel. “A little leaven,” Apostle Paul warns, “leavens the whole lump” (Gal 5:9, 1Cor 5:6).

And one of these “leavens” is our preaching that God is “moved” by our faith.

This is of course true in the sense that God loves to see faith in His people and will always respond to their acts of faith. However, when we listen to the “testimonies” we Christians are sharing every Sunday service nowadays, one cannot help but notice that people actually think it’s their Faith that got them their miracles!

Because they believed, they were healed;

Because they acted out in faith, they got the promotion;

Because they held God at His word, they got the breakthrough;

Because they kept confessing positively, their fortunes turned around;

Indeed, they got the miracle because they MOVED God with their faith.

Ok, so let’s just go straight for the jugular on this one now: FAITH IS FOR  MOVING MOUNTAINS, NOT FOR MOVING GOD.

And the reason that Faith does not move God is not because the Almighty is too Big to be moved; but because before your Faith came, God had ALREADY moved!

Long before the sickness, He was already wounded for our healing, (Is 53:5)

Long before the lack, He had already been made poor for our prosperity, (2Co 8:9)

Long before your sin, He had already shed His blood for its remission, (Rev 13:8)

Therefore, long before your move of faith, God has already moved, and was waiting to deliver the blessing to you! That’s something to think about the next time you believe.

AMEN.

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

GREG ELKAN

God Does Not Have Faith

...that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. – Col 1:18

One doctrinal excess of the “Faith Movement” is its declaration that God also operates by faith! That is, just as we need faith to make things happen in our lives, God also uses faith to create things through His words.

This is not just logically wrong, but philosophically borders on blasphemy.

Faith’s not a thing, a corporeal entity, or a ‘force’ that exists outside of God.  Faith is like Gravity. When a man jumps from a 100-storey building, we say it’s “gravity” that pulls him to the ground. But in the strictest sense, it’s the EARTH (owing to the immense disproportionality of its mass to the man’s) that’s pulling him. This act of the Earth’s pulling is what we call “Gravity”.

The Earth doesn’t need something called “gravity”; if its size automatically keeps a seventy-four thousand quadrillion tonne Moon in its orbit, it doesn’t need anything to bring a puny 70kg man crashing to itself.

In this same sense, God’s power at work in our lives as a result our trust in His Word is what we call “Faith”. It’s illogical therefore for God Himself to now need that same faith.

Philosophically, if something external of God is required for His word to come to pass, then that “thing’ – whatever it is – is higher than Him.

God does not have faith, because God does not need faith. His name, (used 6,521 times in scripture), is Jehovah – the self-subsisting/self-Existent One. when He speaks, things come to pass by virtue of who He is.

When our Lord told His disciples to have the “God kind of Faith” (Mk 11:22) He meant “have the kind of faith that’s focussed on GOD”, not that they should have the faith that God has. This is why most Bible versions translate it as “have faith IN God.”

As Col 1:18 hints, God wants His Son, the Creator of all things (including the law of Gravity and the ‘law’ of Faith) to always have the pre-eminence    in all things.

AMEN.

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

GREG ELKAN

Ave Pistoria II

Be zealous therefore, and repent. – Rev 3:19

In what ways are we Evangelicals/Pentecostals as guilty as those who worship Mary?

1: Intermediary

Just as Mary has been (unscripturally) placed as a placatory intermediary between us and an unapproachable God, we have created this construct called FAITH that serves as an intermediary between us and a God who would not act except through faith. So instead of spending our time looking up to God we spend our time checking up on our Faith.

3: Blind Devotion:

There’re Christians who consider Mary untouchable! She is perfect, sinless and faultless. These persons are easily offended if anything less than deferential is said about her. I’ve seen this behaviour also among Evangelicals with respect to Faith. For example, they’ll act scandalised if you state that God can sometimes heal without faith; (even though this is a biblically documented fact).

Wrong View of God

While I’m cool with Mary praying for me, (heaven knows I need all the help I can get), John 16:26-27 tells me why that expectation is fundamentally faulty.

Our Lord says, “At that day you shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loves you, …”

A God who would not lift up a finger to help except through the placations of his ‘mother’ – or of ‘FAITH’ – is not a God of love. It’s also not the character of the God of the Bible.

4: Wrong Focus

The Focus of Christianity is CHRIST. If a total outsider observing us cannot easily make that conclusion – by observing either our Iconography (Mary) or our Theology (Faith) – then we need to amend our ways.

AMEN.

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

GREG ELKAN

Ave #Maria# Pistoria

For thou shalt worship no other god… – Exo 34:14

The Ave Maria (Latin for “Hail Mary”) is a traditional Catholic prayer asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and forms the basis of the Rosary and the Angelus prayers. It also serves as a key exhibit of a core gripe Evangelicals have against Catholicism: idolatry.

Evangelicals insist that the Catholic veneration of Mary is dangerously close to worship – which the Bible clearly speaks against.

But while this accusation is not necessarily true (though it’d still be naïve of us to assume some have not crossed that idolatry line), one wonders how guiltless we evangelicals ourselves are of this act of excessive-honour-turned-worship.

Our Lord says in Mat 7:3-5 “Why behold you the speck that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?... first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the speck out of your brother's eye.”

The Bible says without Faith (translated from PISTIS in the Greek) it’s impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). So it is understandable the amount of prominence faith plays in our theology as Evangelicals and Pentecostals. But unfortunately, sometimes we get overboard with the esteem to the point that we have sometimes even placed God under Faith.

The key to proper theology is always balance. Let’s stay in the middle and not push things, as Paul says, “above that which is written” (1Co 4:6); regardless of the doctrine. Whether it be holiness, grace, prosperity, healing… or Faith.

AMEN.

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

GREG ELKAN