God’s values as recounted in the Bible

God’s values as told in the Bible

God of the Christian Bible has a solution to the world’s problems, and it is entirely different from any of those we as humans can come up with no matter which political party we belong to, no matter how much money we have and no matter which philosophy of life/religion we live under.

First of all, God wants us to love God, our Creator and Lord, and we must love ourselves and other people – our neighbors. God wants to be Lord, but He is not like human rulers, who are often known for their lust for money, power, control, oppression and inhumane measures. For people, it is impossible to make everyone comfortable, and our inherent selfishness makes us think first and foremost about ourselves and what may serve us best.

Therefore, the elite of power and economy often makes sure to provide the greatest possible wealth for themselves and aim to help others who are rich and powerful like themselves.

Socialism versus God

Conversely, Communism, Marxism and Maoism etc. have ideas about helping the poor of the earth, those who are exploited and suppressed by the rich. Unfortunately, however, history shows that not a single one of the regimes that have confessed to these ideologies have lived up to their political objective, all having been governed by a powerful, dominant avaricious and deceitful upper class.

I say this even though, when it comes to the political systems of this world in democratic societies, I have more sympathy for the socialist/communist parties than others (except for their policies related to family, sex, and abortion), and it is true, at least in my own country, Denmark, that these parties are the most likely to pursue a policy that helps the economically unprosperus or downright poor classes and the weak people in general.

But it is basically a counterfeit solution trying to bring God’s values into a worldly system without God himself, and that is deemed to fail.

Blessed are … according to Jesus

Jesus says,

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

For they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

(Matthew 5:3-12)

God’s values differ from the world’s values

Jesus says here that the people who have the hardest time and those who think more of others than themselves are blessed, they are happy, blessed, or lucky (though not in the sense we use the word when we say you are lucky when it is a question of chance/pure luck). They are blessed because they depend upon God.

In the Kingdom of God, there is no difference between people. Only if you or other people think you are worth more (or less) than others – there will be a difference, which is then a manufactured, false distinction.

God counts all as equally much worth, man and woman, children and adults, people from different countries, different tribes and with different languages, rich as well as poor. God’s culture is different from the one that defines the world. When we today see increasing recognition of the equal worth of all mankind it is a humanistic, ideological value.

Love, pray for, and forgive your enemies

God’s law, morality, or culture says that we should love our enemies and pray for them. We must forgive those who have hurt us. In the same way Jesus forgives us for our trespasses if  in faith we ask for forgiveness. We see this law expressed in The Lord’s Prayer. This is a value which is foreign to the value of the world, which is mainly revenge, hatred, and unforgiveness.

We are chosen as stewards of the earth

An intriguing feature of God is that He is omnipotent, he has created us, and he has given us the right or duty to look after and rule over/steward animals, plants, and the whole earth by virtue of or in cooperation with His power in love. I dare say that God has taken a big risk, for are we worth that responsibility? We have always ruled the earth, but have we done it God’s way? No, it is a known fact that ruling mostly have been done by exploiting others, exploiting animals, plants, and the earth itself, by scolding and hating and even murdering those we get into trouble with.

Neither we who call us Christians have done very well. So, we rule by the opposite means of those with which God asks us to rule, which is love, gentleness, indulgence, longsuffering. Jesus says that a leader is not a leader to be served, on the contrary the leader must serve those he leads.

Have we failed?

We, the Christians have not lived up to God’s plans for us to rule or steward the earth. If we to a greater degree had lived out of what God teaches us in the Bible, we would have had more of a positive influence on society.

Being a Christian is not just about your mind or heart, thoughts, and feelings. Just as it does not make sense if a man says to his wife “I love you inside my heart, I feel I love you” but does not live with her and does not do anything good for her, nor lives in a love relationship with her, so does it not make sense that we sit in church and sing beautiful songs and hymns about or to God on Sundays, and the rest of the week we do not live with Him. Then He does not have the opportunity to engage with us or cooperate with us, so that we will be able to live and rule the way God would like us to do it, and one may rightfully question if we know God at all.

Equals “Churchianity” normal Christianity?

In and by ourselves, in our own power we are not able to live according to God’s values. And we, the Christians, the church, the congregation, the pastors, historically have mostly lived by our own standards and values. It suits us best to stay secluded inside a church building and preach about God, sing about God, and pray prayers to God to help us with the problems we have, or plainly fix them all. I recently heard someone call this kind of Christian life “Churchianity”. When we look at church history this seems to be “normal Christianity”, but is this what normal should look like?

Jesus went about in the community, he was in the temple, the synagogue (the church) as well as out among people to teach them to live according to His values, and to help them through His acts of love, loving care and by healing and saving them. God expects for Christians to live this kind of a life. If we lived like this, I believe we would to some extend have been able to drive away violence, power of arms, economic power, and the exploitation of others, so that society would be imbued with God’s love.

The evil enemy

When that is said, we must also recognize that God has an enemy, satan that is also the enemy of all man and not least Christians. He is doing everything he can to block the way for God’s values and to become the essential part of our lives and that of society. He does it with cunning, with lies and deception. He makes us feel righteous in our own minds, he makes us think that our own  thoughts and ideas should be better than God’s thoughts and values, and he makes us feel less or more worthy than other people. He sets people up against each other and against God. He makes us sick, sad, sorrowful, scornful over other people’s bad luck and imposes upon us lots of other sentiments. He walks around like a roaring lion and tries to scare us into doing his will, and he is much more active in getting people to join his party than we Christians are actively giving people a chance to get to know God.

Don’t let the enemy be an excuse for not doing good

But the fact that we have an unscrupulous and evil enemy must never be an excuse for us not to get to know God, for not doing good and for not living with love as the central value. Unfortunately, this happens all the time – people confuse God with satan, and if we the Christians don’t talk about God, this misconception will prevail.

Jesus says we are in the world, but we are—or should not be of the world. Although we live our lives with both feet in the world, this world that does not know God, we must live by values and action as the persons we truly are, marked by God, saved by God, released and liberated by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. When He lived a life in human flesh, walked with us as our brother, and took the punishment on the Cross for all our sins, so that we would not receive the punishment that we had rightly deserved.

Rhonda Mathisen (formerly Hughey) writes in her book “Desperate for His presence: God’s design to transform your life and your city” (Published 2004)

“The truth is that in the Western Church we have become a subculture rather than a counterculture. A subculture can only reflect the value and outlook of the culture it is part of.

The Church is not intended to be a maintenance organization; no, we must be tools for changing our societies! And when we are volatile and unstable, we cannot influence the society around us.  (…)

During Jesus’ trial in the wilderness, it was Satan who tempted him. He was offered power over all the realms of the world, with all their glory, but he rejected it. Jesus knew that there was a true kingdom and a true glory, and he would not settle for imitations. And neither should we!

The Kingdom Jesus came with is not of this world. We are therefore faced with the following questions:  Where do we live—in the reality of the Kingdom of God or in the world? Are you living as a tool for change or are you following status quo? God is looking for the revolutionaries! It is time we stopped trying to “add” Jesus to our culture and instead step into His Kingdom (pages 94-95).

God’s promises to us

It is exciting that God has set us in the position to steward or administer the earth. When we look at what He has promised us we realize that He does not intend that we should enact this leadership all alone. If we do what he says then he will keep his promises, then he will do what he has promised.

Just look at the awesome promises he has given to us:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:8-11)

“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16b).

“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

The Word He speaks has creative power

God tells that He has great plans that are far better than our plans. When He says that His plans are as high above the earth as heaven is, it means that His plans are immeasurably, endlessly higher than our plans.

And He says that his Word, His written Word in the Bible, the Word He speaks, makes a difference. His Word went out and created the world. The Word carries out what it proclaims, it does the will of God and performs his tasks. And it is not just God’s Word that makes a difference; what we say to God, in prayer, makes a big difference—God creates with His word, so, when we have prayed, God can send out His Word to answer our prayer, and there is change! In this way we partner with God to bring about the good that He wills.

God’s word manages what it does because it is alive and effective, and it penetrates and reveals our motives, the thoughts, and opinions of the heart. It can change people of faith from within- so our character becomes more and more like God’s.

The first thing God does when we come to Him as new believers is to create us anew.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new”. 2.Corinthians 5:17.

In the Old Testament, God says to the Jews,

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgements and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God..” (Ezekiel 36:26-28).

The Jews had turned from God and had been abducted into captivity in Babylon, where God gracefully told them that His will was to restore them and resettle them in the land, he had given to them. We can also see it as a prophecy of what happens when Christ makes his entry into our lives and society. A transformation is happening, a

transformation that no psychologist, politician, coach, stylist, pastor, or businessman can bring about.

God has given a mighty promise of His will to listen to the prayers of the righteous and act upon them.

”If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”. (2. Chronicles 7:14).

We, the believers have different tasks in connection with this prayer.

1.   Humble ourselves.

2.  Seek the face of God.

3.  Turn from our wicked ways.

The prayer must come from a humble, broken heart, from a woman or man who is aware that she/he is a sinner who is tired of being haughty to God and someone who will humiliate herself/himself and seek the face of God.

It is not a form of prayer in which you reel off some phrases, which you have learned to say with an underlying expectation that God is a machine where you pick up prayer answers. Here it is a believer who is aware that he/she stands before the living God, he/she has come to the end of himself/herself, who is fearful because God has all the power, but who, on the other hand, also knows that he/she is expected, that God is waiting for him/her to come before the face of God in prayer, and that He wants to answer the prayer.

Repentance

God is not unapproachable; he is not a distant ruler whom one cannot reach. He wants fellowship with us sinners, just as we see it in the New Testament with Jesus.

Along with the humbleness comes the repentance of a human being who is sad that he/she has sinned and of the fact that he/she basically has an evil heart. This is a man or woman who does not try to cover up something; he/she has come “to the end of the rope” with himself/herself and realizes that only God can put the broken pieces together again.

When this kind of prayer comes to God in heaven, He will listen to it, and He promises that He will forgive that man or woman, and He will heal the land.

Here we come back to the responsibility of stewardship. God did not set us to rule over or steward the world and His creation all alone. He has always expected for us that we should do it in cooperation with Himself. Only by the power of God can we truly manage and transform the world around us.

If we as a congregation of God, as Christians, had continued to work in society in cooperation with God in the way they did in the first church, just after the shedding of the Holy Spirit, as we see it in the Acts of the Apostles, then the world would surely have looked different. Then we would hardly have experienced the destruction of the world economy and the threat of a new world order and a fascist dictatorship. Evil had not been eradicated, but the world would have been a lot more peaceful to live in.

Transformed communities today

Around the world there are communities (around 1000) where God in cooperation with local believers has transformed life, where He indeed has healed the land. These are communities where there have been an extremely high level of crime, alcoholism, unemployment, rape and sexual abuse of children. The situation has at some point become so serious that pastors have come together, across church boundaries and have regularly prayed together .

Police officers, politicians, mayors had typically also been involved in the common prayer for their communities and themselves. After they had persevered in prayer, it has happened that God has intervened with a spiritual awakening/revival, so that the whole community has come to know God, and He has healed the land. The overriding problems that were before are seen to have disappeared. The healing of the land may even go thus far that the earth becomes much more fertile than it has ever been. The crops become healthy and huge.

Rhonda Mathisen is the founder and head of Fusion Ministries Inc., and  I remember from a meeting that she mentioned an example from one of the transformed societies. Here a stream that ran through the land area in question was very polluted and completely opaque. After the transformation had begun, the stream became clean and clear on the stretch that ran through the land that was affected by God. Reports have been collected from many of these communities and videos have been made, Transformations

I, II and III.

Paradigms for healing prayer

Rhonda Mathisen sets up a number of paradigms or mindsets that we, the Church must abide by in order for God to work with/for us (pages 170-174 – my paraphrases):

1.       We must move from suspicion to trust. One example may be that Christians in a city once a year gather to pray, at the Evangelical Alliance prayer week, but for the rest of the year agree that the differences in theology are too great for the churches to cooperate and pray together. Here we must realize that it is not only possible to pray together, but that it is also useful for us and our city.

2.      We must move from a unit of function to a unit of relationship. We should not just make projects and events together, but also make sure that we have vibrant relations with people in other church communities.

3.      We must move from horizontal agreement to vertical agreement. It is of no use if we have a unity with each other (horizontal) but are not in common unity with the Lord (vertical). We must seek the Lord together.

4.      From revival visits to transforming dwelling. We should not settle for the temporal awakening inside the church, and expect God to visit us, but we must focus on being a community where the Lord stays so that society outside the church can be transformed. So that institutions are transformed: offices, classrooms, restaurants, prison cells, nursing homes and sports halls!

5.      We must stop building our own “empire” but become aware that when we hope that God will come and transform our society, we co-build the Kingdom. Here we lay down our own agendas and work together on God’s intentions for our cities.

6.      We must go from being workers to being loved. We move away from performing to resting and the satisfaction of being loved — so that we can love ourselves and can express it in the ministry.

7.      We must go from being warriors to worshippers. Many have grown tired and even wounded by too much emphasis on warfare against the enemy, satan. When we begin to rest in that we are loved, warfare is a product of our eyes being directed at Jesus, where it is not the struggle but the worship at Jesus’ feet that oustes the kingdom of darkness.

8.      We should not be focused on “secular versus sacred” but be focused on the Kingdom of God. We don’t get much concerned about whether we’re with Christians- but whether we serve God where we are at in the workplace, in the sports club, as a business manager, as a local politician, as a neighbor, and so on. That is what Martin Luther called serving God in calling and standing.

9.      We go from human methods to God’s presence. Right now, we are seeing a frustration in the churches about man-made programs and methods. Here we turn away from busyness to instead seeking God in prayer, where our character is cleansed, and we become willing to wait for Him.

10.  From experts to learners. In the Western world, we value knowledge, and when we know a lot, we consider ourselves experts in the church. But we do not live out our knowledge in great fertility. In contrast, God works with great power and efficacy in the non-Western world, in signs and wonders, revival, salvation and transformation of cities. Leaders become teachable disciples, so we are in training instead of being experts. Here we are in a weak and humble position where God can come through with His solution.

Watch this video where Rhonda Mathisen at a conference in Norway speaks about what transformation is.

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/dm-pn2rKm_4

Transformation in Fiji

Rhonda Mathisen highlights Fiji as a place where the transformation of society is very extensive. Here was a military coup where the nation was moving in a downward spiraland the clerics acknowledged that they were responsible-that violence and rebellion were a consequence of their lack of unity. They then gathered across church boundaries and cried out to God for forgiveness and grace. Tribal leaders began convening their villages for prayer meetings, where they humiliated themselves before God and pleaded with Him to send His presence.

30 days before a nationwide election, a new political party was formed, and because of God’s intervention, a God-fearing prime minister was elected. The church is in a call to repentance and prayer for the surrender of the nation to God. New believers fill the churches, and the military leaders who went to prison after the year 2000 coup were saved in prison.

“God touches the nation of Fiji and answers the cry of the people. One of the most remarkable attributes of the revival in Fiji is the pervasive effect it has had in many areas of society. There is a transformation of the church, in political life, in economics, in ecology and in business life. There are also many signs and wonders happening in nature. Coral reefs have been renewed almost overnight after falling into disrepair for decades; fish that had been gone for nearly 50 years have returned in abundance.

Fruit trees, which previously bore no fruit, are now weighed down under the weight of an abundance of ripe fruit.” Pages 164-165.

There are citrus trees which produce fruit every month, and in Almalonga, Guatemala they grow huge carrots which weigh three kilos, and they stay fresh for months. Lettuce that are much bigger than a very big pumpkin.

Creation liberated from sin expresses its joy with abundance

“When creation is liberated from sin, it’s expressing its joy with abundance. It’s an amazing thing to see. What we realized was happening is something we now call the transformation of communities. And it describes the changes that happens when the presence of God comes.

When God visits a community with His light and His life, hope comes into the community just like when Jesus was walking on the earth. His presence brings light and life. The good news of the Kingdom of God.

It brings an awareness of God’s holiness. It changes the climate of the community. It’s a manifestation of God’s love, His glory, His power, His wisdom. And He comes to a people who have intentionally prepared themselves for His arrival. And this is very different from the revivals we saw in the twentieth century. The transformation today is not like the revivals we have seen before where God just breaks in and blows everything up for a couple of months, and then He leaves. And people try to hype it. They write books about it, they take credit for it, they start fighting about it, and the Lord just leaves. It’s no mystery why the Lord just leaves.

But this is different. This is something God is requiring us to prepare for. Transformation is a significant invasion of the Kingdom of God. It’s God’s salvation destroying the works of the devil. That’s what Jesus said about Himself. He said,

“I have come to destroy the works of the devil!”

He wants to destroy the works of the devil in your community. (…) When He went into a community it says that people brought to Him all the people that were sick, the demon possessed, those suffering pain, the paralyzed, and He healed them.

That’s what He wants to do today. He wants to destroy the works of darkness in the communities, He wants to bring His extravagant grace to replace poverty. He wants to bring His justice to all the injustice. He wants to bring His love and His light to the brokenness in our communities. That’s the dream of His heart.”

“Jesus came to set us free, save us from sin, and give us life in abundance. He intended not only to influence us individually, but also as a community. Jesus has much more at heart than the personal salvation and blessing of individuals of His Church; His plan includes bringing salvation, restoration, and transformation to people, cities, and nations before He returns (see Ezekiel 47,9. 12; Revelation. 7,9.14)!

We cannot know our true identity until we have met Jesus.” P. 184-185.

Call to prayer and work while it is day

Transformation is possible, and this website aims, among other things, that the call to prayer reaches as far out into the world as possible. We have no promise that the world will be totally renewed, for the end will come as prophesied in the Book of Revelation, the antichrist will come, and men will come to face the choice of accepting the mark of the beast. But we must work as long as it is day (John 9:4).

The call is to get on your knees today.

Bring family, friends and congregations, pastors, deacons, prophets, teachers, evangelists, and worshippers/prayer warriors with you.