Life Lessons

In Fighting

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      Once again, it is that time of the year that we have put a bird feeder outside our dining-room window, and it gives us a lot of pleasure watching the little birds feeding there. But you know, even among the birds there is continual scrapping going on. The small silver-eyes stand on a branch nearest the feeder and fluff their little wings angrily at each other. The bold mynah struts around at the base of the tree and even jumps up on the branch to take a few pecks before he gets chased off. The sparrows take no notice of the others and greedily grab as many beakfuls as they can while the others are scrapping among themselves.

    It reminded me of how we as people often scrap among ourselves, sometimes vying for the better places or positions. This is not how we are meant to behave, especially in church situations. The Lord Jesus told us to be prepared to take the humble place and wait for others to give us a higher position rather than angrily (or sneakily)  try to take it from others.

    It is not smart to behave like this anywhere, and only causes hurtful situations that often can never be remedied. People can forgive, but they very seldom completely forget!

Our politicians as we get near the election time, too, seem to do all they can to take each other down so they can get the place they want. It almost seems that the good of the country is completely forgotten as the candidates each extol the virtues of their campaign hoping to gain that seat!

Let’s make sure that we aren’t like this, but be prepared to take the lower place and support those who have been promoted over us!

Random Devotional Thoughts

God’s Word is Like….

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    I was reading the verse from Hebrews 4:12 where it describes God’s Word as being ” quick (living) , and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”.

     There is nothing so convicting and convincing as God’s Word if we allow it to sink into our minds. It IS possible to shut one’s mind to it, but if we do that, it won’t be long before its influence on our ways and thinking will disappear and we will become hard and unyielding.

    This verse shows that it is like an extremely sharp two edged sword, cutting both ways, as it goes in and as it comes out…there is a story that illustrates this point perfectly….

   There was a man once who had didn’t believe in all this God rubbish (as he put it). One of the old time evangelists came to his district and was holding meetings several times a week. One of our man’s friends persuaded him to go to one of these meetings.

“You know I don’t believe in all that stuff”, he said complainingly to his friend, “I’ll go just the once, but no more, mind!”

He sat through the meeting, working out all his arguments against the preacher in his mind. His chance came when the preacher offered to take him home.

“Well, Sir,” our man said, “I don’t believe all that stuff you told us tonight. What about…..?” and he presented his first argument.

The preacher was silent a moment and then he said, “I don’t know about that, all I know is that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin.”

Our friend was a bit taken aback. He hadn’t expected a reply like that. But he rallied and then put out his next argument which was guaranteed (he thought) to get the preacher’s hackles up.

    Again the preacher was silent a moment, and then he said, “Well, I haven’t heard that one before, but all I know is that the blood of Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin.”

Our friend wasn’t going to be deterred, and he thought of several more arguments that he felt sure the preacher had no answers for.

    But each time the preacher just quietly said, “Well, I don’t know about that…..all I know is that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin!”

     By this time they had reached our friend’s house and the preacher pulled up to let him out. Our friend gave one more parting shot as he left the car…”Well, I’m not coming back any more to hear that stuff!”

“That’s fine friend,” the preacher said, “But just remember,” as our friend went off into the darkness, “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleans us from all sin!”

   The preacher went home, prayed for our friend and didn’t expect to see him again. But God’s Word which had been used as a sword, and as a strong hammer which can break rocks, began to work in his mind. A couple of nights later, the preacher heard a knock on his door just he had gone to bed. He opened the door, and there stood our friend looking rather distraught and haggard.

“I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since that meeting the other night,”  he said, “All I can hear in my mind are those words, the blood of Jesus Christ cleans us from all sin….I can’t get rid of them. What do I have to do to put my mind at rest?”

“Come on in,”  the preacher said, “It’s never too late to talk about the things of God”. He was able to explain to our friend that the way to have peace in his mind, was simply to tell the Lord that he realised he was a sinner and needed to be made clean from all the bad thoughts and habits he had formed over the years.

   He gladly did this and became a different man as a result. He had different aims now, and went to different places. The old ways didn’t attract him any more. Now he could say, and mean it with all his heart….. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleans me from ALL sin!”

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Who’s Driving Your Car?

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         Sarah was sitting in church one Sunday morning with her mind only half on what the speaker was saying. ….

“I’m going to tell you a modern day parable to illustrate what I’m trying to get across to you”, he said, “We hear people talk about being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit, and allowing Him to control you’. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us….we are not to be controlled by strong drink like a drunk person, but we are to allow Him to control us in the same way….”

   Sarah suddenly sat up when she heard the preacher say….”It’s like this. Imagine you are driving your car along the road of life, and you see a hitch-hiker with his thumb up asking for a ride. You somehow know that this is the Lord Jesus asking to come into your life. You have the choice of either going straight past Him or stopping and giving Him a lift. Most people will just go straight past Him and not give Him a thought. But perhaps you think you would like to ask Him into the car with you.

 You stop and let Him in….but where are you going to put Him? In the luggage compartment? No, you are not that mean. In the back seat then? Well, no, you would like to talk to Him a bit on the trip. What if He asked for the keys of the car? No way, you think, I’m driving this car and I want to go here or there where I please.

    This is just what we all do with the Lord Jesus…we might let Him drive a short distance after we’ve been to camp and got a spiritual lift, or after hearing a good speaker at church. But then you simply HAVE to make a stop along the way, and when you get back into the car, you are back behind the wheel again!”

   Sarah sighed. Why did preachers always have to put you on the spot? She knew very well that there were times when she did wrong things and went to wrong places or looked at wrong things, and that Jesus certainly wasn’t driving her car at those times.

    The preacher finished his talk, but the things that he said stuck in Sarah’s mind, and as she got older she always thought of this little parable whenever she was tempted to do something she knew wouldn’t please the Lord.

    She really DID want to let Him drive her “car” but it wasn’t always easy. After all what was it the Lord Jesus said to His disciples?  “If any person will follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me”. (Luke 9:23)

Random Devotional Thoughts

Where is Your Helmet?

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David, the Psalmist in the Bible, could say… “For You are my hope, O Lord GOD: You are my trust from my youth” (Psalm 71:5).

 I was listening to a preacher the other day who was talking about hope. Not hope with the thought of it may or may not happen, but hope as a confidence and certainty. There is another verse in the Bible where it says to put on the helmet of the hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8). Once we have this helmet firmly on our head, no matter how many darts of doubt and fear Satan fires at us, we can overcome them.

    The law in New Zealand says that it is compulsory for every cyclist to wear a helmet while riding their bike on the road. It is no use carrying it on the handlebars of the bike, because that won’t keep us safe if we have an accident. We have to have it on our head  to be safe. Every time we have an impact, we have to adjust it and wear it properly again.

   So it is when troubles hit us on our ride through life, we have to adjust our helmet of hope and get on our bike and go on again. Every negative thought that Satan gives us, we have to counteract with our helmet of hope, and count our many blessings.

  It is no use counting our blessings on our fingers and our troubles on the calculator, we are to do it the other way around. Every new morning we are to put on our helmet of hope and count our blessings; we are to firmly fasten it with thanksgiving to God, and to resist negative thoughts which come from the evil one. We will then be able to face the new day with a positive and confident “hope” as we go to work.

Life Lessons

Free at Last!

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Freedom at Last!

       We can hardly believe it! No more signing in when we go to a shop! No more having to stand out in the cold in a queue while waiting to get our groceries! We don’t realize how precious our freedom is until we lose it. We could see the reason for our recent lock down, but that didn’t make it any easier to put up with the restrictions.

   As we look around, we can see that there are many restrictions that we suffer from in life, and yet we don’t stop to analyse them. How many older folk are restricted by their failing bodies! This is something that we could all face in the future, and mostly through no fault of our own. As we look around our garden at this time of the year (winter), we see that this is a force of nature, and a natural time of rest and later, rejuvenation.

   Then again, others are restricted by their bad habits which have turned into addictions. In these cases, they only have themselves to blame, not that that makes it any easier to break them! The main thing is to not slip back into old ways if we have for some reason, been able to get free of  them.

   Some people are restricted from having a good relationship with others because of a bad attitude…either theirs or yours. To hug a resentment, refusing to apologise for some wrong done, does no-one any good. As it was once said, “There’s no point in getting on your high horse, because you will only have to eventually come down!”

   People today are so easily “offended” by some chance remark, and carry it until it becomes a full blown resentment that eats them up!

   There is only one way to become free of these restrictions (apart from those of old age), and that is through our Lord Jesus Christ. He can set us free if we will only ask Him. You might say that you don’t believe that sort of thing, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Have you ever asked Him? He has done His part for us, and we have to do our part in responding positively to Him!

Random Devotional Thoughts

How Old is Your Soul?

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The older we get, the more we tend to think about what lies ahead. We get to the stage of avoiding going to reunions where everyone looks SO old! Then we realise that they are probably thinking the same about us!

   It gets to the stage when invited to a grandchild’s engagement or birthday party, that we look around and see with horror that we are probably the oldest ones there!

   I stopped to think about this one day and remembered an incident when a young man said to his grandmother, “Granny, tell me, how old do you feel?” (She was in her early eighties by this time).

“Well,” she said, “It’s like this, I know my outside looks old and wrinkly and my bones ache when I get up, but inside I don’t feel any older than fifteen!”

“Really!” said the young man astonished, as he went on his way.

    The reason for this is that a soul is ageless. It never ages. It has been made to live for ever regardless of the age of the body it inhabits and when it dies. Every soul is precious in the sight of God, and His great desire is that each one will live with Him for ever.

    But along with God’s great love which people like to think about, goes God’s innate holiness and sense of justice. All wrongs must be righted and dealt with, and we would all agree with that. God knew that man could never pay the debt of all these injustices so He took on Himself to pay for these in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ, the only sinless Person who has ever lived on earth.

   We may choose to not believe this, and this is our right, but then we must bear the consequences. God has done His part, and now we must do our part which is humbling ourselves to accept this free gift  so that our soul will live for ever in God’s presence. Don’t let anyone put you off making the right decision because the alternative of living without God or anything good for ever and ever doesn’t bear thinking about!

Morning Musings

The New Normal!

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       At long last life is beginning to almost be normal, as we settle back into level two of the covid-19 pandemic. And yet for many people, it will never be normal again. There are those who will have lost loved ones at the worst,  or  their jobs and livelihood leading to despair if not panic. Still others will see their businesses dissolving under their eyes, even as they try to pick up the pieces. We have been able to resume some sports (with reservations), and Christians have been able to go back to their church gatherings under strict regulations.

     The authorities are doing their best to tide people over, not seeming to realise that at the end of the initial short period, things are still going to be the same. What to do? Dish out still more millions from the money tree? Try to create jobs out of thin air?

   These are very interesting times that we are living in and only time will show the final outcome. It is very interesting to think that with all of man’s inventions and yet more technology, yet the future cannot be accurately forecast. We know that things are not going to get back to the old normal, and that we will have to adapt even more in ways that we cannot imagine, even at this point in time. So we cannot predict exactly what is going to happen tomorrow, we can barely be sure of this evening!

    Every week that goes by there are new things happening that open up new scenes….for instance, who would have imagined that this latest event in America would cause such a rumpus right around the globe? Words like anarchy and arson flow into our minds, as we see the scenes of senseless destruction on our TV screens. These merely show us how close to the surface, this sort of thing is, in the hearts and minds of many people. It just show the contrast between this sort of behaviour and the words of Jesus Christ who said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives is what I am giving you. Don’t let your hearts be troubled or your minds be afraid.”  (John 14:27)

   So if you are feeling all  upset and uncertain,  respond  to God who gives peace as we come to Him in genuine and sincere enquiry. He says, “Those who seek Me will find Me” (Luke 11:9-10)

Adult Testimonies

God’s Patience.

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The Lord said…..  “My Spirit will not always strive with man…”  (Genesis 6:3a)  The following  story illustrates this point very clearly.

“Hi Ozzie”, Keith sang out as he drove up to the house, “Are you coming out with me tonight to the church service?”

“Aw, I can’t make it tonight”, Ozzie said, “We’ve got a visitor coming for tea, so that cramps my style a bit. Maybe next Sunday.”

“OK, That’s a pity”, Keith  said as he swung the car around.

   He went down the road in a thoughtful mood. He had been taking his cousin Ozzie to the church services for nearly twelve months, and he had noticed a big difference in him in that time. His language had cleaned up, and he seemed to be more cheerful and not so complaining.

    Keith hoped that Ozzie had been really listening to the different preachers as they spoke each Sunday night, and not just been enjoying the singing and company of the other people there. After all, that was only part of it all. He thought of those verses in the New Testament where Jesus frequently said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”.

    He knew it was one thing to hear what is being said, but quite another to let the words sink into one’s mind and then down to the heart and put them into practice .

Keith knew what it had been like for himself….once he was faced with the facts, there was no turning back and now he couldn’t have been happier. Now he really wanted his cousin Ozzie to know the same peace of mind and heart that he had found in believing the things concerning Jesus Christ..

   But from that time on, Ozzie seemed to be making more and more excuses as to why he couldn’t make it on Sunday nights. The day came when he told Keith  that he wouldn’t be going any more….it just wasn’t convenient, he said.

   Keith was disappointed, but he knew that people have a free choice. He had made his mind up himself to continue going to the church services and as he did, his understanding grew. He wasn’t going to let Ozzie’s attitude change his mind.

   Over the intervening years, they met occasionally and still did certain jobs together (both were farming), but the old camaraderie was missing. More years went by, nearly twenty in fact.

    Keith was visiting his father one day. “You know, I had a visit from Ozzie the other day”, his father said. “He said a very strange thing. He told me that he’d had a very vivid dream one night recently…. He dreamed he saw a big blind coming down from the sky and he knew that it was between him and God. And then he said, ‘You know Unc, I couldn’t come to God now, even if I wanted to!’ I really didn’t know what to say to him”.

   Keith knew the verse in the Bible where God says He won’t strive with people for ever, that there comes a day when He will take people at their word, and leave them alone. He was very sad to hear that, and yet he himself had been unable to pray for Ozzie for some time, and felt that this was indeed a message from the Lord concerning him.

   We do well to take heed to the consequences of Ozzie’s choice and realise what a sad plight he was in. That was still his attitude when he eventually died.

See what God has to say to YOU.