Shadow and Shade

 

It was 40 degrees when I took this photo at my son’s farm and noticed these sheep making the most of a lovely shady Plane Tree in front of the house.

These ticular sheep are rather special as the mothers are pets that belong to my son and his family. Now they and their lambs are not human nevertheless they all think that they are part of his family and naturally expect to be treated as such; therefore they are given special treatment and enjoy special treats that other sheep never have and don’t even know about.

Being a committed Christian is like that; the 91^st Psalm says that if we dwell in a close relationship with God “we shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” and that is a lovely place to be; if these sheep didn’t come near to the trunk of the tree they wouldn’t be covered by its shade. Likewise, if we don’t draw near to God we won’t receive His protecting benefits either, and as the sheep learn to trust their owner (or shepherd) with the equivalent of the “faith of a little child” that Jesus spoke about, then all sorts of benefits and privileges follow.

 For us, this “close relationship” is with God and comes about by our accepting His forgiveness as we believe in Jesus and then follow His commandments. Having done that we feel the confidence the sheep in the photo have as they consider themselves to be part of my son’s family. The question that arises in some people’s minds is: “can we really have a relationship like that with God?” And the answer is: “we sure can” because when God created people it was His original intention for them to have that close relationship with Him, but we forfeited that right by letting  sin come between Him and us . Interestingly the bible says “All we like sheep have gone astray and turned each one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on himself the iniquity of us all”. However even though we are beneficiaries under His New Testament the benefits are not ours until we claim them by the “simple act” of repenting and believing in Jesus which reinstates us as “children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ”. (Well when I say “simple act”, God made it simple for us but it was very costly for Jesus). Then of course, with that forgiveness and reinstatement comes the assurance that “all things work together for good for those that love God” and also His promise that He “will be with us in trouble, deliver us and honour us, with long life He will satisfy us and show us His salvation”.

If you haven’t already made a commitment like we’ve been discussing above, and are thinking of making a New Year’s Resolution, you couldn’t do better than to decide to do what is outlined there and thus assure yourself of Eternal Happiness and Contentment starting right now and lasting forever.

Best wishes as you ponder this. Have a very happy and blessed New Year.

Regards, Tom.

 

Bible references used: Isaiah 53:6, Romans 8:17, Psalm 91, Romans 8:28.

More about Christmas

What a great time Christmas is; there is no other time in the year when families come from all over the country to be together. Relatives who have not seen each other for a long time make the effort to visit, presents are exchanged, a good meal is enjoyed and there is great fellowship. The spirit of love and friendliness is everywhere. On Christmas Eve any stranger you pass will wish you a happy Christmas and you will be only too happy to do the same .

  Seeing this Agapanthus bud opening absolutely amazes me. These flowers in all their completeness and colourful designs were completed inside the closed bud. The things you or I would say were impossible, are no problem at all to a God who can program a plant to do that. For example we are told in Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel in the New Testament that the Angel Gabriel came to a young virgin named Mary and told her that God’s Holy Spirit would arrange for her to become pregnant; and that her baby would be called Jesus and be the saviour of the world as had been predicted hundreds of years before. No problem for God!

The Angel also appeared to Joseph, the man Mary was engaged to, and explained the situation to him. I am pleased to say that Mary and Joseph accepted the responsibility of becoming the earthly parents of the most remarkable child that was ever born. It is interesting that God chose an ordinary carpenter’s home for Jesus to grow up in. That way Jesus can relate to you and me because he understands how ordinary people live and what it means to be short of money at times and all that sort of thing.

When Mary was 9 months pregnant, Caesar Augustus (the Roman emperor) decreed that all people had to return to their place of birth for a census to be taken, so Mary and Joseph returned to Bethlehem. However they didn’t phone ahead and make a booking at the motel for two reasons: Firstly phones hadn’t been invented yet and secondly there were no such things as motels either. Therefore they had to take “pot luck” that there would be a room at the Inn, however they were late arriving as Mary was just about to give birth and riding side saddle on a donkey was a bit rough and slow. By the time they got there the other visitors had taken all the rooms. Of course God had arranged this so Jesus would be born in a humble stable and would use a feed trough as his basinet. That way no one would ever be able to say Jesus had it better than them.

There was great rejoicing that night as a host of angels appeared to the shepherds nearby singing “Glory to God in the highest, good will to men” and told them about Jesus birth, so they went and worshiped him. Shortly afterwards 3 wise men from the East followed a star that they knew would lead them to the Saviour and after expecting to find him in Herod’s palace finally found him in the stable at Bethlehem.

And they presented Him with presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Herod had asked them to return and tell him where the baby was when they found him, however they were warned by God that Herod wanted to kill the child so they returned home another way. God then warned Joseph about the assassination plot too, so Joseph, Mary and Jesus took refuge in Egypt until they were informed that King Herod had died.

Because of all this Jesus has no difficulty empathising with refugees either as He and His parents had to flee for their lives. Our Jesus is adequate for any situation and therefore offers salvation to anyone who believes as He said himself: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life”. And ultimately that is what Christmas is all about.

Jesus is the reason for the season so I do trust that you have a lovely Christmas.

Best wishes,   Tom.

 

Healing

My mother was living in Sydney and she was limping because she had arthritis in the knee and it was swollen. Christian hands were placed on either side of the knee and the words Peter & John said, when they healed a crippled man, were quoted: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, be healed”. Well it worked for Peter and John and it also worked for mum’s knee as it was healed instantly as she felt heat flow into her knee. Many people reading this will shake their heads in disbelief, and I can understand that.  Some time ago, in an article titled “God’s Problem”, I mentioned that “my Christian walk” had been somewhat weakened because, as a new Christian, I had read and believed a commentary on the New Testament by a Doctor of Divinity. You see he said that miracles like that don’t happen now, and because of my inexperience and his qualifications I believed his every word. However when I saw that happen to my mother, before my own eyes, it tended to spoil his theory as far as I was concerned, and as a lady asked me recently “Did Jesus heal everybody?” I thought we might have a brief look at this subject just to whet our appetites.

I suggest therefore that we put aside the commentaries of “learned men” for a few minutes and see what the New Testament says. I mean you can always come back to their theories if you want to. Well for starters, Jesus did heal everyone who asked Him for healing (Matthew 12:15 says “Great multitudes followed Him and He healed them all”.) And so it went throughout his ministry; there was not one occasion where He said “no I won’t heal you because your sickness will make you a better person”, and Paul said that his “Thorn in the flesh” problem was “a messenger of Satan” to control his pride because he had visited Heaven (2 Corinthians 12:7). Jesus said we

must have “the faith of a little child” and told his disciples to “teach all nations....to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). So you see Jesus is still very much with us. Those disciples have passed on but the end of the world, He referred to, has not yet arrived.  The implication is that the “baton” has now been passed on to other believers like you and me. I say “Baton” because our lives (and Christian lives in particular), are like a relay race; when an athlete has run his leg of the relay he hands the baton to the next athlete who to the best of his ability duplicates or improves on what the athlete before him accomplished and then he too passes the baton to the next in line and this is repeated until the race is completed. Likewise in the Christian “Relay race” the first runners did a remarkable job and “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). However many of those who took over from them were ill-equipped because they failed to receive and use the gifting that became available to Jesus followers at Pentecost. Gifts like healing (1 Corinthians 12:9).  Jesus saw this gifting as very important to the extent that although these Apostles had been with Him for a long time and certainly believed in Him, He nevertheless told them to wait for the gifting from the Holy Spirit before they set out to spread the Gospel. (Acts chapter 1)

Paul says in Romans 12:4, that just as our physical bodies have many parts and they don’t all do the same thing but are dependent on each other, so we being many make up the “body of Christ” and “have gifts differing according to the grace given to us”. We should not be satisfied to blindly accept somebody else’s opinion of what the New Testament is saying but should study it ourselves. Information passed on verbally can lose its original meaning. During a battle an officer realised they needed more soldiers so he said “Pass this message down the line: ‘Send reinforcements, we are going to advance’”. However by the time the message had been repeated many times the officers at the rear were told: “Send three and four pence, we are going to a dance”. There is no substitute for the written word being read and acted on with the “faith of a little child”. Jesus said things like: “Your faith hath made you whole” or “According to your faith be it done unto you”. Now “faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God,” so we know how to acquire faith. The other requirements are Righteousness and Holiness needed by the person proclaiming the healing: Doctors don’t walk in off the street and start operating without “washing up” and making sure everything is clean, not just “more or less” clean, do they? Likewise, If we want to be fit vessels to convey God’s healing power we must “Present our bodies....Holy” (Romans 12:1). Not just “more or less” Holy, either because this type of healing is a form of “Spiritual Surgery” Jesus said: The works that I do shall ye (believers) do also. (John14:12),    Food for thought?    Regards,   Tom.

Dinosaurs

It seems that all children love dinosaurs and are fascinated by them. I wonder if they inherit this fascination from God, their Heavenly Father who designed and made these creatures. When God was talking to a man named Job, thousands of years ago as recorded in the Old Testament of the bible, in the last half of the 40^th chapter and the whole of chapter 41 of Job. God expressed a certain fascination and delight with the Behemoth and Leviathan. We don’t call them those names now because our Archaeologists only discovered their fossils in recent times and called them dinosaurs and they probably weren’t familiar with the bible either.

Obviously some of these animals were still around in Job’s day so it is interesting to hear this firsthand account of their features. For example (reading from the New Living Bible translation) where God is speaking to Job: “Take a look at Behemoth which I made, just as I made you. It eats grass like an Ox. See its powerful loins and the muscles of its belly. Its tail is as strong as a cedar.....its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs are bars of iron.....it lies under the lotus plants hidden by the reads in the marsh” and so on. Then talking about Leviathan, God says : “....If you lay a hand on it you will certainly remember the battle that follows, you won’t try that again! No it is useless to try to capture it, the hunter who attempts it will be knocked down.....I want to emphasise Leviathan’s limbs and its enormous strength and graceful form...its breath would kindle coal, for flames shoot from its mouth. The tremendous strength in Leviathan’s neck strikes terror wherever it goes ...no sword can stop it, no spear, dart or javelin. Iron is nothing but straw to that creature”. And so it goes, all of which is a fascinating eyewitness account of creatures that no longer exist. (unless there is one in Scotland's Loc Ness of course).

Dinosaurs further testify to the greatness of God in that they laid eggs. As I have said before, the makeup of an egg is beyond human understanding (whether it be a fowls or a dinosaurs). In either case the mother has to pack every element necessary for the making of the complete baby into the egg in a semi liquid form, and then seal it before placing it in a nest. She has to do this inside herself without looking, which is a completely impossible task unless she had a Science Lab, to weigh up all the ingredients or else the assistance of an incredible God. People trying to be smart ask “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” Well the bible is clear on that; God made the adult birds and animals first and told them (or programmed them) to reproduce after their kind.  If you are an Atheist you have a responsibility to yourself to explain how that fertilised molten mass inside that shell can possibly contain all the necessary ingredients to make a baby dinosaur and how it can form into a complete dinosaur without the intervention of a super intelligent God. Unfortunately there are  people who would believe anything, no matter how illogical it may be, in preference to believing in God and Jesus and the wonderful gift of salvation (from the consequences of sin) that he offers to all those who do believe. Now, to not believe in something doesn’t always matter, however in this case it is very serious as those who don’t believe in God and Jesus, forfeit their right to Eternal Life, (John 3:16) and that is tragic. 

Anyway, best wishes as you think that through, Tom.

P.S. Don’t leave this page in the sun or those other 2 eggs might hatch and you will have your own “Jurassic Park” to cope with! (Well they do look real, don’t they? ).