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Reading - With God on our side (John 8:47)
Bob Dylan wrote the following as an indictment against nations who fight each other, each believing God is on their side:
My name it is nothing, my age it means less.
The
country I come from is called the mid-west.
I was born and brought up
there the laws to abide
And that country I live in has God on its side.
We sometimes hear people say that one person and God is a majority and
many stepping out in God's service believe they do so with God on their
side. Of course, he often is but I don't think this is the way to look
at it.
In John chapter 8 we witness one of the most fierce, even violent
confrontations between Jesus and the religious authorities. Jesus was
berating them for not accepting his message. They did not accept it
because they had a very high view of themselves. When they objected
that "The only Father we have is God himself", you can almost touch
their comfortable, but erroneous, assumptions. Jesus replied:
"If God were your Father, you would love me,
for I came from God and now am hear…He who belongs to God hears what
God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God"
(v.v.42-47).
The problem here
was that, although they were convinced that God was on their side, the
truth was that they were not on God's side. Had they been they would,
indeed, have received Jesus.
In today's world, contrary to popular myth,
people are still making decisions based on their, often religious, convictions.
They are frequently convinced that they are bound to prosper because
God is on their side and Bob Dylan's song is perhaps more relevant than
ever, no matter what the secularists may claim.
But, like the Pharisees
of Jesus' day, we can convince ourselves that our agenda always meets
with God's approval when all along God has something quite different
to say to us. It is a simple thing to fall into the error of thinking
that our way is God's way, when surely we should be asking whether God's
way is our way. In the simple, every-day decisions of life are we prepared
to learn and grow, or are we, like the Pharisees, so entrenched in our
traditions and practices that we cannot remember the last time we actually
sought to know the mind and will of God?
Another sixties songsmith wrote
the following:
All through the years I, me, mine, I, me, mine,
I, me, mine.
All I can hear I, me, mine, I, me, mine, I, me, mine.
No
one's frightened of saying it, everyone's playing it,
Coming on strong
all the time.
All through the day, I, me, mine.
Have we asked ourselves
recently, "whom am I really serving these days? Am I following the dead
letter of habit? Or am I seeking the guidance of God's living Word and
Spirit?" Perhaps we should not be asking whether God is on our side
(of course he is if we seek to trust and serve him) but whether we are
on his side. You see God is a majority on his own and we can lose sight
of that if we convince ourselves that it is all about us. It is not
- it is all about God.
May the Lord make himself known to you afresh
this week as you seek his face.