God the Holy Spirit spoke to me this morning from the verses of Psalm 56. David is on the run from King Saul and has landed in Gath surrounded by and living among, of all people, Israel's great enemies the Philistines. He prays/sings:

'Be merciful to me, O God, for men hotly pursue me; all day long they press their attack. My slanderers pursue me all day long; many are attacking me in their pride. When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? . . . I am under vows to you, O God; I will present my thank offerings to you. For you have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.' Ps. 56: 1-4, 12,13 NIV

From these words and the life of one of God's great worshippers, the Holy Spirit reminds us that the mercy King David asked for: 'Be merciful to me, O God, for men hotly pursue me(1) and received: ' . . . I will present my thankofferings to you for you have delivered me from death and kept my feet from falling . . .' (12)is mine in Jesus right now as I wait upon Him and the ministry and power of His Holy Spirit. Every issue that faces us, presses us, and even perhaps surrounds us - Jesus is the answer for right now. God is bigger than our issues - God is bigger than our fear. Our job is to ask Him - and allow Him - to help us to seek His face with poise and to be still and know that He is God.

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'Cleansing from sin is to the very heights and depths of our spirit if we will keep in the light as God is in the light, and the very Spirit that fed the life of Jesus Christ will feed the life of our spirits. It is only when we are garrisoned by God with the stupendous sanctity of the Holy Spirit that spirit, soul and body are preserved in unspotted integrity, undeserving of censure in God's sight, until Jesus comes.' Oswald Chambers

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'Your (spiritual) life is every day to be a proof that God works impossibilities; your (spiritual) life is to be a series of impossibilities made possible and actual by God's almighty power. That is what the Christian needs. He has an almighty God that he worships, and he must learn to understand that he does not need a little of God's power, but he needs - with reverence be it said - the whole of God's omnipotence to keep him right, and to live like a Christian.' Andrew Murray

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A great word of wisdom from Oswald Chambers at the beginning of a new year - or at any time of any year - on how to know God's will on any matter in our lives:

'There are times when you cannot understand why you cannot do what you want to do. When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it in, but wait. The blank space may come in order to teach you what sanctification means, or it may come after sanctification to teach you what service means. Never run before God's guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt - DON'T.'

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'You simply cannot disentangle Jesus from miracles. Scholars . . . (have) tried very hard to discover a nonmiraculous Jesus. They utterly fail. Every single strand of material in the Gospels shows Jesus as Someone who was different in His powers from other people. Through Him God acted in a way impossible to understand if we think of Him simply as a good Man. The miracles begin at His birth, without human father. They continue in His ministry; miracles of healing and of exorcism, nature miracles (such as His feeding of the multitude or His walking on the sea in a storm), and supremely His raising from the dead Lazarus, the widow of Nain's son, and Jairus's daughter. Last of all comes the greatest of miracles . . . His own resurrection from the grave - not just to a further span of life but to a new quality of life over which death has no power. That is the only Jesus for whom there is any shred of evidence - a remarkable Being exercising unheard-of powers . . . He exhibited miraculous powers, and not once or twice but continually.' Michael Green

In the year of our Lord 2010 more than ever we need to see God the Father, in Jesus His Son, through the power of His Holy Spirit changing our world, changing the lives of people in our world, rescuing the perishing - and they are everywhere - in our world. 'Jesus STILL is the answer for the world today!' Will we who have met, been changed by, and - however imperfectly -follow Jesus allow ourselves to be made and used by God as His ambassadors to share the message of 'Glorious Freedom' to our very enslaved world?

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