Father tom's notes

MONDAY 1st.FEBRUARY
Isaiah 6.1-8
Here I am, send me!

Isaiah had a wonderful vision. In his vision he saw God and how great and awesome He was. He saw the angels falling down and worshipping God's majesty, singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory!" This experience of seeing the awe and supreme greatness of God immediately made Isaiah feel unworthy. In the light of God's holiness he was immediately made aware of his own sin and uncleanness. He cried out, "Woe is me, I am lost, I am ruined." God convinced him of how sinful he was. As soon as he was aware of his sinful state and admitted that he was a sinner before God, he experienced God's cleansing, forgiving power. God touched him and made him whole and clean. He was assured that his sin had been atoned for and his guilt taken away. This experience of God's greatness and his sinfulness being cleansed away was preparation for Isaiah to hear the challenging call of God. When God called out, "Whom shall I send?” he was ready to respond, "Here I am, send me!"

As we come to know God, we, too, are made aware of his splendour and awe and greatness. His light shines into our hearts and convicts us of our sins too. We feel unworthy and in need of a Saviour. Through the Good News we find what we need; that we have a Saviour in Jesus who has atoned for our sins and taken away our guilt. This is the way we all have to come to become a Christian. By Christian, I mean a fair-dinkum Christian - a person who has decided to turn to Christ and commit his life to God. To have had this kind of experience is to have been, what the Bible calls, saved; in other words, brought into a real, personal relationship with God. Salvation makes us ready to hear God's individual call to follow and serve Him. When God calls, "Whom shall I send?" we are more than ready to reply, "Here I am, send me!"

PRAYER: Father, as we see the Bible and our experiences of you revealing to us your splendour, majesty and greatness, we suddenly see how sinful we are. Then we see Jesus dying on the cross to take our sin away. We put all our faith in His cleansing power as we commit our lives to you and say, “Here l am, send me!” through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

TUESDAY 2nd.FEBRUARY
Psalm 138
God does not abandon what He has saved!

When we see the greatness of God and we experience His wonderful splendour and majesty, we, like the angels in heaven, automatically find ourselves wanting to praise and worship Him with all our hearts. The more we appreciate Him through praise, the more wonderful He becomes for us. We experience more of the love that He longs to lavish on all His children. We see that His love and faithfulness excels all that we ever knew. One of the things that really strengthens us in our relationship with God is that He answers prayer. When we have had such an experience, how strong and confident it makes us! It fills us with enormous gratitude.

We want to go on and on thanking the Lord and praising Him with all our hearts. Above all, we are grateful for the Lord's love, for stretching out His hand to save us. When we remember that the cross of Jesus brought us into an eternal relationship with God by saving us from the consequence of our sins, our hearts are filled with joy. We are confident that the God who has saved us will never discard us. We will be His for ever.

PRAYER: Father, I thank you with all of my heart for your faithfulness and love. Thank you for always being willing to hear me and answer my prayers. Thank you that when you saved me by the power of the cross of Jesus, you made me to be yours for ever and promised never to throw me away. Make me ever so faithful and loving that I may indeed be yours for ever, through Jesus our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 3RD.FEBRUARY
1 Corinthians 15.1-8
The Gospel
The good news that saves

How do people come to be saved? Paul gives us a very clear answer to this question in today's reading. We are saved by hearing the good news about Jesus. If we take a firm stand of faith and really believe the word of God in the Gospel message, we know that we will be born again into a living relationship with God. In the next few verses we see a thumbnail sketch or summary of the Gospel that saves. It contains the essential thing that we have to believe to be a Christian.

Firstly, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins in fulfilment of the prophecy of the Old Testament in Isaiah 53.5 - "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. Secondly, that after He was buried He would rise again on the third day is also a fulfilment of prophecy in Hosea 6.2 and Psalm 16.10, "After three days He will rise and you will not abandon me to the grave or let your holy one see decay.” This fulfilment of the Old Testament scriptures was seen and experienced by many as the Apostle Paul points out. Hundreds saw Jesus resurrected from the dead. He gave very convincing proof that He was alive. Paul knew because he had seen the risen Lord himself.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for the Good News that saves. Thank you for letting Jesus die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the dead to bring new life to us. May we never lose faith in this fantastic good news, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

THURSDAY 4th. FEBRUARY
1 Corinthians 15.9-11
By the grace of God
I am what I am

Paul knew that he did not deserve to be saved. He knew that he was the last person that Jesus should have appeared to because he had persecuted Jesus' disciples. Yet, in spite of that, God chose him and brought him into a saving experience, justifying him freely by his grace (Romans 3.24). Our salvation is not something we can earn or deserve. It is a free gift from God (Ephesians 2.8). We receive it by faith which means trusting in Him and His promises. Paul was saved by grace for a purpose. This purpose was to work hard for the Lord as a very diligent apostle and minister of God's word (preacher). Like his salvation, his work for the Lord was not something he achieved by himself. His ministry was, "not I but the grace of God that was within me".

John Newton was also an undeserving person like Paul. He was a slave trader. After his experience of salvation he wrote the popular hymn, 'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

His grace is freely available to us all. As we receive it we can all rejoice in our own personal salvation, however good or bad we are!

PRAYER: It is such a relief, Father, to know that I don’t have to earn my salvation. I know I could never make myself good enough for you. Thank you for pouring your grace into my heart and bringing me into a wonderful personal relationship with yourself. Pour in more grace that you may work through me to bring others to salvation, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

FRIDAY 5th. FEBRUARY
Luke 5.1-7
The miraculous catch of fish

Today's reading again demonstrates the power of God's word. As Jesus preached, people were so thirsty for His message that they crowded around Him, very eager to hear everything that He said. They were pushing and shoving so much that Jesus was finding it difficult to preach, when He got a brain wave. He saw a couple of fishing boats pulled up on the beach. "What a good pulpit one of these would make", He thought to Himself. So He asked the fisherman, Peter, who gave Him permission to use his boat. When the sermon had finished, Jesus again
demonstrated the power of His word. He spoke to Peter and told him to put down his net in deep water. Although Peter thought it was a ridiculous suggestion, because people never caught fish at that time of the day, he immediately obeyed Jesus. "Because you say so I will let down the nets", he said to Jesus. What a tremendous surprise when he hauled in the biggest catch he had ever seen!

Jesus still speaks to us today. God is longing for us to hear. When we learn how to listen to God and when we obey Him, we discover that His word is true, because what He says will happen, does happen. Peter acted in faith when Jesus spoke to him. If we, too, can act in faith when we believe Jesus is speaking to us, then what great things we will experience in our lives.

PRAYER: Jesus, help us to find out how we can listen to you. When we do hear you, help us to believe it is you speaking to us and give us the courage to take the steps of faith we need to obey you. Thus may we receive all the blessings you are longing to give us. Amen.

SATURDAY 6th. FEBRUARY
Luke 5.8-11
Don 't be afraid, from now on you will catch men

When Peter saw the great power in Jesus and how tremendous He was, he reacted in the same way as Isaiah did when he had that vision of God in the Old Testament reading this week. He felt unworthy and sinful. "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord," was his reaction to Jesus. Coming into the divine presence of Jesus made him afraid. Then Jesus spoke to him and as He spoke, all his fear died away. He became very attracted to Him. When Jesus told him he was, from then on, going to catch men instead of fish, Peter was ready and eager to leave everything to follow Jesus.

Jesus is speaking to us today. Many of us are becoming aware of how tremendous He really is. This happens when we see the great things He does in response to prayer. Maybe at first we, too, feel unworthy and want to run away from Him. But if we keep close to Him, we will find this fear will soon be gone as Jesus fills us with faith. If He calls us to be fishers of men or to some other task involved in the building up of His Kingdom here on earth, we should always be willing to respond just as Peter did, because Jesus relies on us to win the world for Him and bring everyone into His Kingdom.

PRAYER: Father, when we begin to experience your presence in our lives and when we see how great you are, please take away all fear. Fill us with faith, that we may trust you and your word, so that we are ever willing to obey you and become fishers of men. May our co-operation enable your nets to be filled, through

Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

SUNDAY 7TH. FEBRUARY

THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE

If you want to become a successful fisherman there are three basic requirements. You need to have the right equipment, the right bait and the right skills. In today’s gospel Jesus calls us all to be fishers of men so we need to make sure we have the right equipment, bait and skills.

1. The Right Equipment.

To be equipped to be soul winners we have to have a strong relationship with Jesus. We have to have accepted Him as Lord and Saviour of our lives and be truly born again. As Anglicans we believe this takes place at our Baptism but we have to have made the decision to accept Christ ourselves in a really fairdincum way.

We have to know Jesus and continue in our relationship with Him. We also must have a strong commitment to the church and be regular worshippers. We need to have a good knowledge of the Word of God. To read, mark and inwardly digest the scriptures, particularly those that tell us how Jesus died and rose again to forgive our sins and enable us to become God’s friends.

2. The Right Bait

When I used to fish a lot as a teenager I can remember I was able to catch lots more whiting after I had been given a yabby pump. These fish love yabbies and can’t resist taking the bait and being caught. To have the right bait we have to make Jesus to be very attractive. We do this by showing the huge difference that Jesus has made in our lives. We have to live the gospel; that means we have to mirror the character of Jesus in our lives. We can also
tell people the amazing miracles Jesus had done for us or for others. (Read Books about great Christians or take a note and remember the testimonies of other Christians whom God has helped. I have lots of books in my library if you would like to borrow them)

3. The Right Skills

Not everyone can catch fish easily. There is a knack about fishing you have to learn otherwise the fish just take the bait and swim away free. To be fishers of men we have to have the right skills. There is only one way we can learn these skills, they must come from God Himself. God gives us these skills by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us power to draw people to Jesus. As the Bible says: ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses.’ (Acts I: 8) Jesus said: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (John 6:44) That means before we go fishing for men we have to pray for them.

Pray that God will draw them to Jesus.

PRAYER
Father, God we want to become fishers of men & women.
Equip us to be effective witnesses for you. May the fruits of the Holy Spirit grow in us to attract people to You and give us the gifts of the Holy Spirit to enable us to draw others into your kingdom. Through Jesus our Saviour.Amen