Friday September 21, 2012

What are the things you are or have been making       excuses for?

Confess them and stop using excuses.

 

Read Mark 2:23-28

 

We live in a world of excuse making. Ever since Adam and Eve started blame shifting, we’ve been playing along. If we are late to work, we blame the traffic or the buses or whatever. It’s never my fault. If my assignment isn’t done on time it’s not my fault. Something went wrong. If I miss a shot on the tennis court, my racquet wasn’t working properly. Excuses. We love excuses. Our brains are hard wired to make excuses.

 

Unfortunately many people have used today’s verse as an excuse to do as they please on the Lord’s Day. They can work or garden or go shopping or just remain super busy or even go fishing or white water rafting (non of these things are wrong in and of themselves) because the Sabbath was made for ME and not ME for the Sabbath.  It really is a convenient excuse that allows me to replace myself where I truly belong - at the centre of my universe!!!

 

But I hope that you can see, having looked at the issue of Sabbath all week, that the Sabbath was created for us to bless us and to draw us nearer to our heavenly Daddy. The Sabbath rest is a heavenly blessing for us to keep our hearts and minds and bodies on the right track.  It was never given to us as another day to work on, to do school assignments on or to just laze around being bored.

 

We were not made for the Sabbath in that it was never designed to be filled with laws and regulations about what constitutes worship or what constitutes work and so on.  In Jesus’ day the Pharisees had a list of rules and regulations about the Sabbath that functioned as a fence around the Torah so that one of them might not even unconsciously break the Law. Over time these laws (which may have started with the greatest of intentions) became a burden and source of legalistic fervour.

 

True Sabbath is about relationship. It’s about being with God and with God’s people, our brothers and sisters. True Sabbath is about love in action. It’s about meeting and edifying and being with each other.

 

In our world we talk about working 24/7, studying 24/7, being hassled 24/7 and so on. But God doesn’t like 24/7. God’s plan is 24/6. We work, we study, we get hassled, we fuss and bother for 6 days not 7. The seventh day is holy to God. It’s different and because of this we are to be different!

 

Prayer:

Spend time in adoration and confession and thanks.

 

Adoration:

 

 

Confession:

 

 

Thanks:

 

 

Supplication:

¨ Pray that God would be moving within His Churches and bringing great blessing to His people so that there is a growing desire to know God better. Pray that this leads people in the church to be astir and that more people come in seeking to find what all the fuss is about. Pray that we would see a revival in this great Southern Land.

Pray that each Christian in your local church would be serious about his or her faith and that he or she would make a regular, weekly appointment with God that transcends all other appointments. Pray that this would so bless each person that others strain to come in to receive this blessing and find Christ Jesus.