Law Vs Circumstance Series

As I read the readings for today, I got to realise the assumptions that we make as people. I once asked my nine-year-old grandson why he comes to church and he said “I come to church to see you Gogo”. It was an honest answer from a child. Before becoming a priest, I used to come to church to impress God. I made sure I never missed a Sunday so God can be proud of me. Now I know that people come to church for different reasons. Some of the reasons we can list here:

• Some come to church because they are going through something

• Some come to church because they are driven by guilt (they don’t want to anger God)

• Some come to church because they have been asked to.

• Some come to church to feed their souls.

I know there are more reasons than these. I realised that we as people would rather make assumptions about what is right instead of listening to the bible. We make assumptions because we don’t know. We don’t know because we don’t ask. When we ask we hear answers we are not ready to hear. So we let our circumstances tell us when to go to church and when to stay at home. We let circumstances dictate our faith and not the law. Why is law important? Law is important because when the law was formed it was formed by the Holy Spirit. Taking into consideration all the circumstances we may go through and I mean all. The Bible teaches us that the Holy Spirit is our helper. Meaning the laws were formed to help us. For example, when the law says to love your neighbour as you love yourself, it has taken into consideration the different circumstances we could go through.

I often hear people say “When God made that commandment, he didn’t know my neighbour”. Like their yoke is heavier than the law. The law is created to carry the yoke. The law makes the yoke easier because it was written out of love for you. The law was created to progress you and not hold you back. Rejecting the law is rejecting love. God is love.

Most people remain stagnant in their faith because they don’t apply the laws. They reject the laws for many reasons. They don’t trust them. some say they are outdated. The laws cannot be outdated because God doesn’t change. It’s what makes faith easy. You always know what God expects from you; there is no need to wonder because times are changing. God won’t change. He can be trusted because He doesn’t change. Circumstances change the law doesn’t. Judgement will be based upon being led by circumstances and not being led by law. If you go back to the beginning of the bible, in Genesis, Adam and Eve followed circumstances and abandoned the law. God chased them out of the Garden of Eden because they could not live by the law.

To simplify the entire Bible, there is law and circumstance. The law always comes first the circumstances come second. If you meditate on that you could see that it’s telling you to uphold the law – it must come first in your life. The circumstances are secondary. Yes, I must be honest and agree that some circumstances can seem pressing as a matter of life and death. But I assure you that God would never let down a person who chose Him over circumstance. He did not let Abraham down when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

I don’t want you to think of the circumstance as a bad thing. Think of circumstance as a way to strengthen the law within you. It’s giving you a chance to prove to God how much you love Him. The moment a circumstance comes it could turn out to be a point of sin or glory depending on your choosing. The circumstance is a point of power. Jesus says “If you love me Keep my commandments”. The great thing about God is that He doesn’t judge a man until his last day on earth. Giving you the rest of your life to repent.

But the mystery is that nobody knows their last day on earth. If we knew we would gallivant and indulge in sin and when we know it’s our month to die we repent and start doing things right. But our last day, the bible says, is hidden even from the Angels – Only God knows it.

In escaping living according to the law, men created their own rules for life. Man became concerned with circumstance and feared circumstance more than God. He came up with a new way to respond to circumstances. As man became more concerned with his ego and pride he naturally grew apart from God. God says, “I resist the proud”. At any moment when you want to show people who YOU are, or when you want people to know you – you have moved away from God.