Hot or Cold

There is a shop in Orana Mall in Dubbo called “Bed Bath N Table” and they have delightful items on display including this Teapot and Cup and Saucer.

My wife, Audrey, loves this sort of quality china and was also very happy to use hers to entertain guests if they called in; she always had some scones made and some lovely cake so would greet the visitors with “The kettle is just about boiling, so come in and have a cuppa”. Freshly made Tea served black or with milk and sugar was always very popular at our house.

On the other hand, if Audrey had made the tea a half hour before and served it up luke- warm, I don’t think many of our visitors would have been as enthusiastic about coming in for a “cuppa” the next time they visited: Iced Tea, yes. Hot tea, yes, but half way between the two, no thank you. (I’m pleased to say that she never made that mistake).   

Apparently though, on some occasion during his time on earth Jesus must have come across such a situation, it probably wasn’t tea but whatever it was he really didn’t enjoy it luke-warm, because when he was sending a message to the Christian church at Laodicea, he told John to tell them that they were “neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot” He said “So then because thou art luke-warm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth”.  Very drastic words so we must be very careful to not live the way they were living and we had better find out what it was that they were doing that disappointed him so much, after all they represented Him by calling themselves a “Christian church”. Now, whatever religion you may be, or even if you are an atheist, you will have to agree that if you know something that would be of great help to your neighbour, and don’t tell him, or her, about it then your friendship isn’t worth much. When you consider that true Christians believe that Jesus action on their behalf is the greatest news that there is in the world, and these Laodiceans were half hearted about sharing that information, then you can see why Jesus was disappointed with them.

Well it comes down to this: God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to pay the price of our sin so we could inherit Eternal life in Heaven with him. You see “God was in Christ, reconciling the world (us) unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). These Laodicean people had gladly accepted that forgiveness and reconciliation for themselves, but made the mistake of not sharing the knowledge of its availability with others, and that action, or inaction, on their part, contravenes what Jesus said was the second most important commandment which is “to love your neighbour as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39). And that is a commandment, not a suggestion.

This then should be a “wake up call” to all Christians so that we will get on with the privilege of sharing this Gospel with others. After all we have a unique and wonderful “experience” to promote and share: Christianity is a gospel of love. We love God for the forgiveness he has given us for free, we are helped by The Holy Spirit to love everyone (even our enemies) and we are to do good to those who treat us badly (Jesus is our example, he even asked God to forgive those who were crucifying him). If the whole world was truly Christian then we would all live in harmony, as it will be in Heaven.

The Lord’s Prayer to God says: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven” so we can look forward to that day and should do our bit to make it happen where we are.

God will bless us as we do that.  Best wishes, Tom.

 

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Lost in the Crowd

I was standing on the median strip between the East bound and West bound traffic when I took these photos; there are two rows of different flowering plants here, both having very lovely flowers as you can see in the close up photos: As we drive past at 60 kilometres per hour we think “those flowers look nice” but unless we stop and take the time to examine them, we will never know how nice. This of course applies to our life generally; we look at a forest but don’t really see the individual trees that make the forest, or even notice that every one of them has its own different charistics.

The Dubbo “Photo news” Newspaper publishes the photos of the babies born in the hospital each week, and what a collection of delightful little faces they are; every one being different but beautiful, like those flowers above. People walking past you in the Mall or in the street were lovely babies too, some time ago, but in many cases are now showing the signs of “wear and tear”, which is natural as they may have been living in circumstances that haven’t always been ideal and caused them stress. Meanwhile, the sun and wind dry out their skin which also adds to that ageing appearance. However, most women combat that dry skin problem by using moisturising cream, but as good as that is, it only goes skin deep and unfortunately doesn’t solve those deeper problems of hurts and stress. I am pleased to say though that Jesus, who was brought up in a community like ours, recognised the needs we have and made some very helpful suggestions like: “Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Paul who had been through hard times himself said: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6). Now that is “Spiritual Moisturising Cream” and if applied daily will make a terrific difference to our “Dry Souls”. It is a universal cure, irrespective of what you have been through or who you are.

This is not some vague theory to me, as I have had my share of “difficulties” and regularly apply this “Spiritual Ointment”, without which I could not exist. However, I was fortunate that as a child I learned that we need complete commitment to whatever we take on, if we are to make the most of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

For example, in this photo (taken some time ago) that is me in the foreground testing the water temperature in our home dam, with my big toe, and that just doesn’t work. My brother John and sister Anita did right; they just ran straight in and immersed themselves.

Likewise, if we want to accept the benefits God is offering us in the New Testament we cannot first “test it with our toe”; we must make a full commitment to accept His forgiveness and do things His way. Best wishes, as you think that through (if you haven’t already done so). Tom.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

By Faith not by Works

 

A large number of people would have seen me taking my wife to the Mall in a wheelchair, morning and afternoon, for many years now. I do that so she can have a better quality of life. Bear in mind that Audrey cannot move or speak so I count it a great privilege to be able to do this for her. We “window shop”, see the lights and pretty things, meet people and even have morning tea together.

Over the years, many people have come to me and said: “No doubt you will get to Heaven”. In saying that they are trying to express their appreciation of the fact that I help Audrey so much and they honestly believe that if we do good things like that, God will notice and thus we will somehow earn His forgiveness for anything we may have done wrong, and our Soul will be therefore accepted into Heaven.

 I can see where they are coming from, but that is not the way it works. In the New Testament letter of Paul’s to the Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8 we find the following statement: “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them”.

If we examine that text, we find that God created us to do good things so I get no special credit for being kind to Audrey. Further to that in Ephesians 5: 25 there is an instruction to husbands to love their wives, therefore, to do so is just looked on by God as me doing the normally expected thing. And to cap that of course, when we were married both Audrey and I vowed to each other that we would look after each other for “as long as we both shall live”. So no matter how you look at it I am just obeying the “Road Rules” and no driver gets any special privileges for that because it is what is expected of him or her.

So we see that obeying God’s rules is good for all concerned and if we want to spend eternal life in Heaven we need to be endeavouring to comply with those directions, but in themselves they don’t earn us a “Passport” to Heaven.

 In short, there is only one thing that earns us that privilege (as the text above says) and it is a “Gift of God” which is faith in, or belief in the redemptive act of Jesus sacrifice on the Cross at Calvary. As the Apostle John quotes Jesus as saying in the 16^th verse of the 3^rd chapter of his Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but inherit Eternal Life”

 Well that brings us to the next question “Were those people right when they said Audrey and I would get into Heaven?”

Yes, they were right, as it turns out, because both of us do believe in the saving grace of Jesus, and have been endeavouring to live the way that is expected which includes loving God and endeavouring to love our neighbour as we love ourselves; for sure we have made many mistakes since we made that commitment, but we endeavour to keep “short accounts” with God by daily asking for his forgiveness for those mistakes.

Aren’t we all fortunate that God was so gracious in making Salvation from the consequences of sin so simple for us that anyone can ask his forgiveness in prayer and know that if they are genuine and willing to endeavour to do things the way he would like in future, that they are forgiven and are on their way to Heaven. In the Old Testament, Isaiah (the prophet) wrote in the 6^th verse of chapter 53 of his book: All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all” (New Living Translation).

You have probably seen these sheep before, in one of my articles, and that is because, like you and me, they always need help. Happily, that help is only a prayer away.  Best wishes, Tom.

Galilee

This photo of the sea of Galilee does not make the hills on the other side of the water as clear as I would like but that distant shore is some 10 to 15 kilometres away and may well be the slopes where the 5,000 men plus women and children sat to hear Jesus talk about the Kingdom of Heaven and afterwards receive a very adequate meal of barley loaves and fish: adequate, I say because there were 12 baskets full of leftovers collected and the fact that there were only 5 barley loaves and 2 fish to start with (before Jesus blessed them) didn’t go un-noticed by the crowd either.

After they had all eaten, Jesus told his disciples to get in a boat and go across the lake and he would join them when he had dismissed the crowd. However, after dismissing the crowd, he didn’t go and join them straight away, but went off on his own to pray for a while. Now that was probably why he sent the disciples away: so he could be alone with The Father: there is a time for praying with others and there is a time when we need to be alone with God, and if Jesus felt it important to talk to God (being who he was) we must surely need to do so too, (being who we are).

Grape growing vineyards were very common around the shores of the lake at that time and Jesus was aware that the people had a fair knowledge of that occupation so he reminded them of the fact that the vinedresser made sure that the surplus growth on those vines was removed so that the plant wouldn’t waste energy, by just making leaves, but would spend all its energy in producing fruit. He drew a parallel to that in our lives, indicating that God has given us an important work to do, if we agree to follow him, and will guide us to not get involved in too many “side issues.” Therefore, he will “encourage” us to produce more fruit. When you come to think of it; (if the vine could think), how privileged and excited it would be to see itself producing so much extra fruit and having the Vinedresser taking such a personal interest in helping it to do so.

Jesus took this even further by saying “I am the vine and you are the branches; he that abides in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” (John 15 verse 5). As a matter of interest then: what do you think He means by “producing fruit”? Is it the fruit of the Spirit becoming evident in our lives (Galatians 5:22)? Or is it sowing Gospel seed into other’s lives (Luke 8:11)?  Or is it “harvesting” souls (Matthew 9:37)? Actually I think it is all of those and this is such an important matter that it is imperative that each one of us should read the first 17 verses of chapter 15 of John’s gospel, so we know how we stand in relation to Jesus on this issue.

Shepherds were very noticeable in that area in Jesus day too, and they probably still are. Good shepherds were very much admired by Jesus as they loved their sheep and were even prepared to lay down their life for the sheep if necessary in order to protect them from savage predators such as lions or bears. After leading their sheep to good pasture during the day they brought them back into the protection of a “fold” (or as we would say a “yard”) at night, and if even one was missing (having gone astray) the shepherd wouldn’t sleep until he went out and found it.

All this was well known to the people of that area so it was very meaningful to them when Jesus described himself as “The Good Shepherd” and them as his sheep and explained how very important each individual is in his sight (this applies to you and me too of course) and he actually did lay down his life for us (his sheep). What an incredibly kind action that was? He certainly didn’t have to do it, but because he did, you and I are free from the consequences of any sin we have committed and have a “Passport” to eternal life if we are prepared to repent (change our thinking) and believe on him. To not accept that free pardon would be a dreadful mistake of course, so I hope that every one reading this would accept it. After all, Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one cometh unto the Father but by me”.     Best wishes, Tom.