Peter Horrobin's Blog

From today’s News: “Bomb disposal experts in the German city of Koblenz have successfully defused two bombs from World War II found in the riverbed of the Rhine.

They were discovered when water levels fell because of a prolonged dry spell. The bigger of the two bombs weighed 1.8 tonnes (4000 lbs) and was dropped by the Royal Air Force between 1943 and 1945.

Nearly half the city’s population – 45,000 – had been evacuated, including the inhabitants of two hospitals, seven nursing homes and a prison. It is the biggest bomb disposal operation in Germany since 1945.”

Unexploded bombs are an enormous hazard, and they have their spiritual equivalent in the lives of God’s people. Things that happened a long time ago can lie in the riverbed of our lives. These unexploded bombs can be unresolved sin issues that have been swept under the carpet, in the hope that no-one will ever discover them. But when they are discovered they can sometimes explode, causing enormous damage.

When such hidden secrets are exposed, especially of sexual, financial or other relational indiscretions, the effect on those involved, and their families, can be devastating. And when those hidden secrets were in the lives of Christian leaders, the consequential explosion can affect the lives of thousands. People feel betrayed and let down by those who were meant to provide a godly spiritual covering.

Mercifully, the bombs in Koblenz didn’t go off. They were successfully defused by the bomb disposal people. In the work of Ellel Ministries we sometimes feel like a spiritual bomb disposal squad, as we help people come face to face with the unexploded bombs in their lives and then carefully defuse them through God’s proven methods of confession, forgiveness, deliverance and healing.

Not only can these bombs be put there through our own ungodly choices, but they can also be left there through what others have done to us, for example through cruelty, abuse or unresolved traumas.

Often people have been tip-toeing round these bombs all their lives and have desperately struggled in their own strength to avoid setting them off – but the cost and the consequences have often been huge in terms of spiritual, emotional, psychological, psychiatric or even physical damage, to themselves and, sometimes, others as well.

If you know there are unexploded bombs in your life, may I encourage you to deal with them now and not wait for them to go off!

The good news is that when, with the Holy Spirit’s help, the bomb is defused and Jesus deals with the bomb, whatever it may be, you can start to live again. Then you don’t have to live your life under the constant tension of sitting on an unexploded bomb that could go off at any moment. The Gospel of salvation, bringing with it God’s healing and deliverance, really is the most wonderfully amazing and very good news!

Long term goals are only ever achieved by short-term obedience. Or, putting it another way, today’s obedience is always the foundation for tomorrow’s miracle. The miracle of Noah’s Ark being available at the right time, as the means of salvation for the whole of the human race, was only achieved through many years of daily obedience by Noah and his family. For all of that time building the ark must have seemed to be a particularly useless activity!

But when it rained the ark took on a different perspective. Its availability was a sheer miracle of God’s grace – but it wasn’t built by angels in the sky and then lowered on angelic ropes, to save a grateful mankind! It was built by a man for whom holy fear of a holy God (Hebrews 11:7) had become his way of daily living.

God has not stopped asking people to build arks today! He is still calling on men and women to have a long-term goal for their life. I call it their destiny – something that can only be entered into through vision that comes from God – and something that they, and only they, have been asked to do. But be sure of this, whenever a vision is conceived in our hearts from God, the enemy will do everything he possibly can to either take us off course or kill the vision before it has even got off the ground.

So often, whether or not your particular ark gets built will depend on whether or not you live in the false enjoyment of today’s temptations or choose to respond to what God has said into your life. If you let all of today’s activities be controlled by having such a love for God, that you live in holy fear of ever stepping outside of His will and His best for your life, you will build the ark which only you can build.

Satan is so boring that he doesn’t bother thinking up new temptations to take us off course – for the simple reason that the old one’s usually work! He doesn’t even mind us thinking about those long term, even God given, goals provided that in the short term we respond to his temptations and put obedience to God off till tomorrow. That’s all he has to do to rob us of our destiny and to rob God of an ark that could have been an extraordinary blessing to you – and to all those who would have been blessed through what God had really called you to be and to do with your life.

No wonder Paul in Ephesians 4 and 5 lists a whole heap of temptations that believers were falling in to – everything from laziness, through greed, sexual immorality, wrongful anger and a whole catalogue of things that, surely, believers wouldn’t even think of doing – or would they? The fact is, Paul knew that they would think of doing them, so he warned these believers not to give a foothold to the devil by doing them (Ephesians 4:27)!

And therein lies the problem, because when we do something, we first think about it. And if we feel it’s OK to just think about sin, then eventually we’ll finish up doing it! And when we shelve the opportunity for today’s obedience to God and replace it with satisfying the fleshly desires associated with pride, money, sex or power, for example, then we are robbing ourselves of own destiny and robbing God into the bargain!

There is only one way that the arks of our lives will be built – by choosing holiness, one day at a time. Holiness is not the dreadful legalism of religious bigotry, but is simply doing today what God requires of us today! John summed it up in an amazingly simple way by saying “walk as Jesus did!” (1 John 2:6). So what did Jesus do?

Jesus only went were the Father told Him to go. He only did what the Father had told Him to do. He only said what the Father had told Him to say. The conclusion of His life of daily obedience was not the building of a physical ark that saved one family, but the opening of the gates of salvation to all (yes ALL) who believe and receive Him – for He is the only Way of Salvation (John 14:6).

The Father will never tell you to do those things that Paul listed as traps from the enemy in his letter to the Ephesians. He will never tell you to go places so that you can satisfy the lusts of the flesh. He will never tell you to say things, for example, which push others down so that you can push yourself up. For many years people have been taught to ask the WWJD question – What Would Jesus Do? I would like to stop suggesting people ask the WWJD question, and start asking them to simply “Walk As Jesus Did.”

Maybe we should start a new WAJD way of life for believers – something as dangerously radical as actually doing what the Father wants us to do today – instead of just talking about it as a future dream for tomorrow, that in our hearts we know will never be realised. For in reality tomorrow never comes – it’s always too late to do then, what the Father asks us to do today!.

I was once very frustrated by an Indian friend. He would say something like, “We’ll do that tomorrow.” Of course, the following day I was fully expecting to do what he had said. But when it never happened, I eventually realised I needed to ask him what he actually meant by the word ‘tomorrow’. His answer was very revealing, “Not today!”

Many believers have a similar attitude towards obedience to God – they say they’ll do it tomorrow – but in their hearts they are really saying, “Not today”. So there’s never any obligation upon them to actually do tomorrow what was promised today. And of course it never does happen, because “not today” becomes their permanent message back to God – and tomorrow’s promised obedience rarely happens.

I’m actually writing this blog in Singapore en route to Hong Kong for a special Ellel Ministries Training School. I flew with Singapore Airlines, and on the TV screen in front of my seat there was constant information being relayed to passengers about how far they had come, how far it was to their destination and how long it will be before the wheels touch down at Changi International Airport, Singapore. The short version of Singapore on the screen was simply Sin. And throughout the flight I was being told how long I had left to Sin! Only 9 hours and 52 minutes. Then 9 hours and 51 minutes and so on. I was constantly being reminded of how much time I had left to sin!

I wonder what the effect would be on believers if there was a flashing screen in front of our spiritual eyes, telling us how many hours there were left for us to sin before being called to stand before a holy God to give an account of our lives?!

Some, tragically, would rush off to make the most of the remaining opportunities to taste all the sins they had dreamt of? Others, however, would meet the challenge head-on, in repentance, realising that the time we have left to ’build our ark’ is finite and diminishing. How we would respond to such a sign would be a measure of whether or not in our hearts we were responding to the love of a holy God or responding to the impure selfishness of an uncleansed heart.

None of us know how much longer ‘we have to sin’. But one thing we do know is this – if we choose to walk in God’s ways and not to sin, we do know ‘how long’ we will have to enjoy the presence of God – it’s called eternity! Satan tempts us to trade a short-term sinful experience for the fulfilment of our destiny. It’s a bad deal – don’t fall for it. Never forget that today’s choices determine tomorrow’s blessings! Holiness is only ever realised one day at a time – that’s how arks get built!

I was driving into Ellel Grange this week for our weekly team communion. Many different thoughts were passing through my mind, when I quite unexpectedly became aware that the Lord was trying to get my attention! It was as if I was listening in to a conversation between God and one of His people. It was a man who was speaking to the Lord, but it could just as easily have been a woman.

The man was a believer offering up to God everything that was good about his life – all the things he thought God would want and could use. He was really happy to be giving to God his gifts and abilities, his experience, his knowledge, his understanding, in fact everything he thought God would want to use.

But then I saw his crestfallen face, as he realised that what he was offering to God was not what God really wanted! For God was looking over his shoulder at a very dark and hidden area of his life, which he was doing everything he possibly could to hide. “That’s what I really want,” the Lord was saying!

“But,” the man replied, “that part of me is so dirty, unclean, even filthy, surely you don’t want all that? I’m really ashamed of those things. You can’t possibly want those, Lord. You can’t do anything with them.”

But the Lord was persistent, “Yes,” He said, “that’s what I really want. You’ve offered me the good, but unless I have the bad and the ugly as well, you can never be really clean. And you’ll be spending all your energies trying to overcome them and keep that part of you hidden from me! And while you’re doing that you’ll never enter into the best that I have waiting for you! You will always be spiritually tired, fighting a battle that you can never win. Unless you give me the bad and the ugly you will spend much of your life going round in circles, trying in your own strength to deal with them, but failing time and time again and then coming back to me to say sorry – again, but never letting me into the mess. Your prideful independence is your own worst enemy.”

“You see,” said the Lord, “it was the mess that  I died for and unless you give it to me it will always be your master.”

“But, Lord, you don’t really understand. All that muck you can see, that’s the real me, it’s filthy, it’s who I really am.”

“Exactly,” said Jesus, “it’s who you really are. But don’t you realise that unless I have you all, you can never be whole. You will always be trying to hide something of yourself from me. You will be choosing to be divided on the inside – cutting the real you off from me. I’ve always known about that bit of you which, because of your shame, you’ve always tried to hide. But don’t you understand that’s exactly why I died – to deal with the stuff that you can never deal with? I bore the shame of your sin – it’s already dealt with.

“I know all about the real you – and I really love the real you. And can’t you see that unless you give it to me, as far as you’re concerned my death was in vain! For here you are, carrying around all that filthy muck and ugliness on the inside, hoping that you’ll be able to keep it hidden and that it won’t get in the way of your relationship with Me. But the truth is this – unless I have that bit as well, you can never have the depth of relationship with Me that you long for. And as long as you are spending so much energy protecting your sin and your pain, you will never know the real joy of what it’s like to be free. Satan loves to exhaust my children by tempting them to fight battles that I have already won.”

I was deep in thought as I pulled into the car park at Ellel Grange. I was acutely aware of the presence of the Lord knowing that I had a message that I had to share. In a few minutes I would be taking the bread and the wine and as I walked towards the building I knew that I, too, had some personal business to do with God. “Lord,” I said, “will you look over my shoulder and tell me what You see. I want you to have it – all of it.”

I have preached on the cross hundreds of times and shared in communion thousands of times, but last Tuesday morning I was privileged to understand at a new depth what Jesus died for. And then as I took communion the Lord showed me how so  many people fail to enter into the wholeness and healing that the Lord longs for them to enjoy, because they’re hanging on to unclean trash, thinking that God wouldn’t want it! But the truth is, He really does want the bad and the ugly of our lives, as well as what we deem to be good! That way we really can be whole.

Then tonight, as I was leafing through the Scriptures, I came across this question from the book of Job, “How can a mortal be righteous before God?” Job 9:2. There is only one answer to that eternal question – and that is by being clothed in the righteousness of the eternal Son of God who even loves the bad bits and longs for us to give those to Him – for those are the bits He really wants so that he can change us from the inside out!

On Friday 23^rd September I watched Benyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, tell the world that he was looking forward to the coming of the Messiah! Well, not exactly in those words, but in words that were so amazingly prophetic that I am sure he wasn’t really aware of the significance of what he was saying. He was responding to the speech of President Abbas in the United Nations, the speech in which Abbas made his claim of Statehood for the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu’s response was a brilliant speech in which he carefully set out the history of Israel and the region, and the conflicts there have been in our generation between Israel and its neighbours. He made it very clear that Israel wanted peace and wanted to negotiate that peace, but that in reality you cannot negotiate peace with anyone in any circumstance who does not believe that you have a right to exist.

As Netanyahu  brought his speech to a close he suddenly switched into Hebrew as he read from the prophet Isaiah. But what he read was truly astonishing, for these were his words when he read the sentence in English: “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light”, and then he said words that were effectively a prayer as he looked at his audience and spoke to the world as he said, “Let that light be the light of peace.”

He was quoting from Isaiah 9:2, which is the beginning of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy about the coming of Jesus – a prophecy which is declaring that the light that was to come was in fact the one we also call the Prince of Peace. Just four verses later Isaiah describes the light that was to come using these words: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Tears came into my eyes as I realised what I had just witnessed – the Prime Minister of Israel, a Jew, speaking words in the form of a prayer that were telling the assembled body of the United Nations that their only hope of peace lay in the Messiah, the Prince of Peace – the One we know who has already come and for whom believers are waiting with increasing expectation to come again. Indeed as we see the nations struggling to cope with the rapidly changing world situation many will be turning to the end of Revelation where John penned those words “Amen. Come Lord Jesus.”

Earlier in his speech Netanyahu had quoted from a famous Rabbi. Rabbi Lubavich, who had reminded him that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide. That darkness is certainly there for all to see. And it surely is true that only when the Light of the World pierces that darkness, and puts His feet down in Israel for the second time, that for the first time in history the world will know the peace that only the Prince of Peace can bring. Yes, Lord, come quickly. The world needs you now!

As I mulled over what I had just seen and heard, I sensed that what Netanyahu had said to the assembled representatives of all the world’s nations was of much greater significance than most of those present could ever have realised. It felt like a starting gun had been fired in the heavenlies, and that I had just witnessed a turning point in world history – the moment when the Prime Minister of Israel told the nations that only the Messiah can solve the world’s problems!

Footnote: If you would like to watch the whole of Netanyahu’s speech for yourself you can watch it here on You Tube:

Just as when a baby is born to a woman in prison, the baby is also in prison, we are all born into this world as prisoners of sin (we are inherently sinful). We have all been born to parents who themselves are suffering the consequences of their own and, in turn, their parents’ sin. Or, as David the psalmist expressed it, ‘in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Psalm 51:5). Sinfulness, therefore, is an inherited condition of the human heart.

Each and every one of us has a carnal nature which instinctively wants to respond to the attractions posed by the sins of the flesh. None of us are exempt from having the potential for such carnal desires, which have a habit of relentlessly pulling on the strings of our heart! But there is a massive difference between having the carnal desires (inherent sinfulness) and doing things that are wrong (actual sin!) None of us is exempt from sinfulness, but we can all make choices as to whether or not we choose to actually sin!

On holiday this summer we had great fun setting crab and lobster pots on the sea bed and then going back a few days later to see what we had caught.

Lobster!

The lobster in the picture provided us with a very tasty supper a few hours later! But how did that lobster get caught?

Lobster Trap

A lobster-pot is a simple framework which, as you can see, is covered with a strong net. On one side of the pot is a small hole shaped like a funnel and the bait is placed inside the pot – usually a dead mackerel. The lobster first smells the mackerel, then sees it inside the pot and finally does everything it can to get inside. Eventually it finds the funnel leading to the tasty bit of mackerel and climbs down the funnel, but once inside it’s impossible for the lobster to enter the narrow end of the funnel and get out again. It’s trapped by its own desire.

As I looked at these lobster pots the Lord was showing me how sin operates in our lives. We are tempted by something sinful that we would like to have or to do. We make a choice to go after it and look for a way of getting what we want – preferably without anyone else knowing. We enter the ‘sin-pot’ by something equivalent to the funnel on the side of the lobster-pot and enjoy the ‘sin’ (the mackerel). But then we realise that the choice we made has trapped us into the consequences of that choice – we are caught in the pot! This is the essence of sin – choosing to do what we know to be wrong and finding a way of doing it. No matter how much inherited sinfulness we may have, we cannot ever blame anyone else for the sins we commit, they are always a consequence of the choices we make.

But how can we ever make the right choices knowing that the enemy will constantly use the carnal nature to tempt and test us? Praise God, there is an answer! For, not only have we inherited a carnal nature, because our very life comes from God himself we have also inherited what Ecclesiastes describes as “eternity in our hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This operates in our conscience like a plumb-line of truth giving us the opportunity to know what is right and wrong and respond accordingly. Instinctively, therefore, we have a choice – whether or not to respond to the desires of the carnal nature or to choose to look at our desires against God’s plumb-line. We can then decide what we’re going to do – go ahead anyway and sin, or reject anything that’s out of line with His truth.

So what can we do about it when we’ve made the wrong choices and got it wrong? For, just as the lobster cannot get out of the lobster-pot, we cannot get out of the ‘sin-pot’! We are trapped through our own sins and we need help. Our sin has left us under the control of the ‘sin-pot’ and there’s no escape!

The mercy of God is centred  on the cross, the place where God stretched down into time, and into what had become the kingdom of the god of this world, to rescue us from the consequences of both our iniquity (inherited sinfulness) and our sins (the wrong choices we deliberately make). Jesus paid the price for our sin and thankfully, when we come before Him with a repentant heart, He lifts us out of the ‘sin-pot’, restores our soul and puts us back in the sea of life. But without obtaining His forgiveness and mercy, we remain trapped by those sins forever.

Many of the people who come to us for help at Ellel Ministries have entered the ‘sin-pot’, often many years previously and have needed to come to a place before God, whereby they honestly confess their sins and begin to receive the forgiveness and healing that God promises in His Word (James 5:16).

I couldn’t help but contrast the destiny of the lobster after it was caught in the pot with that of believers who have been redeemed and set free! That old chorus says it all:

“Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan,
Oh, the love that brought it down to man,
Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span, at Calvary!
Mercy there was great and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty,
At Calvary.”

Why would anyone ever want to reject such love? Perhaps it’s because the god of this world has blinded their eyes to the reality of what happens to those who are trapped in prison by their inherited sinfulness and have then been caught in the enemy’s ‘sin-pot’ – as a result they never discover the remedy for sin and the only way of escape. And perhaps it’s because there is now so little teaching of what the Bible says about judgement and hell, that so much of the church has lost the desire to evangelise. After all, why would we need to bother telling people about the Saviour, if we have no understanding of what it means to be ‘lost’?