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MONDAY 5tH APRIL
Acts 5.27-32
The God of our Fathers raised Jesus from the dead

Some wonderful truths come out of these few verses of the Bible. When a river has burst its banks and is in full flood, no one can stop it flowing. When Jesus, who had been crucified, rose again and ascended to His Father’s right hand, the floodgates of heaven were opened. God poured out His love by the Holy Spirit which Jesus had released for us. The Jewish officials were trying to stop this flood. They were so weak and powerless. However hard they tried to stop them teaching in Jesus’ name, the disciples were impelled by the greater force of the Holy Spirit to obey God rather than man.

When people do wrong and sin, their hearts get hardened. However much they try they cannot undo the damage caused by sin. Only Jesus can help them. He gives the gift of repentance. People can’t repent of their own volition. They always justify themselves and give excuses for their sins. As we pray for them, Jesus gives them the humility to admit their sins and the strong desire to turn away from them. As they confess, so they are forgiven.

In revival, Christians pray for the non-Christians. Jesus gives them the gift of repentance and then as they obey Him and leave their sins behind, He pours out the Holy Spirit on them.

PRAYER: Jesus, seated at God’s right hand, pour out your Holy Spirit on our area. Give repentance as a gift to all who don’t yet follow you. Pour love into all our hearts so that people obey you and repent. Open the floodgates and let revival fall. Amen.

TUESDAY 6TH APRIL
Psalm 118
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good

There is so much that we can give thanks to the Lord for. Our relationship with Him gets stronger and stronger the more we take time to offer our gratitude to Him. God appreciates us and He absolutely loves it when we appreciate Him. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead, He opened for us the gates of righteousness. In other words, He cleansed us from sin and made us acceptable to God and made it possible for us to come into the living presence of God. As we come close to God it’s so absolutely wonderful, so fantastic that our hearts overflow with thanksgiving and praise. With all our being we adore the Lord.

As we stay close to God we discover that there are so many things that we can be thankful for. The most fantastic thing is that His love for us never ends. Love just keeps pouring out of God’s heart like a perpetual spring.

When we take refuge in Him and trust in His protecting power, He makes us so safe and secure. As the enemy attacks us we only have to use the name of Jesus and he flees away. As we stay close to the Lord we can never fail. He turns what seems like failure into a wonderful success. In Him we are always victorious. That’s why we say:

PRAYER: You are my God and I will give you thanks. You are my God and I will exult you. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His love endures for ever. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 7TH APRIL
Revelation 1.4-8
I am God all powerful

From the day of Resurrection, God’s power was experienced on earth in a new way. His power has transformed the lives of many millions of people since then. Today reports are coming in of His influence which is getting stronger and stronger. For example, The Country of Columbia in South America was dominated by evil forces. It was saturated by drugs and there were continuous drug related acts of violence going on all the time. When Christians came together and prayed and prayed all night God drove the evil out and much of the crime and violence stopped There is now a fresh atmosphere in that country.

In today’s reading Jesus is described as the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. Jesus is in control of Australia. Jesus gets full control by conquering the hearts of individuals. He has freed us from our sins by His death on the cross. When we respond to His call to follow Him, He makes us a kingdom of priests.

As we exercise our priestly duty, which is an obligation to pray for our nation and our world, so God’s power is seen. The power of the enemy is shattered and more people are set free from their bondage to sin and materialistic self-satisfaction. Governments can’t change lives, political parties can’t change lives - only Jesus can.

One day soon Jesus will come again. Everyone will see Him, even those who have come against Him and persecuted His church. Those who crucify Him will be so sorry they didn’t respond to Him when He called them. They will be lost for ever. There is an urgent job for us Christians - to tell everyone and show everyone how powerful Jesus is to us and present them to Him to be set free by His power.

PRAYER: Father God, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the all powerful One, thank you for giving us Jesus to be our King. As we follow Him, empower us to be your priests, to conquer the hearts of all men for you. Amen.

THURSDAY 8TH APRIL
Revelation 1.9-20
Patient endurance in suffering secures the establishment of God’s kingdom

The Book of Revelation proclaims the absolute victory of God and Jesus. However, it was written in a time when the church was under severe persecution. Emperor worship had come to a strong climax and anyone who refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord was in danger of death.

Because he was absolutely loyal to the Word of God and could accept only Jesus as Lord, John was banished to the Island of Patmos, about 70k off the coast of Asia Minor. It was here that he was given the Revelation by Jesus which makes up the last book of the Bible. It’s a hard book to understand. God wanted to encourage the Christians to fight on to victory which He promised would be theirs. He used word imagery which made sense to the Christians, but it is written in a kind of code which their persecutors would not understand. That’s why it’s hard for us to understand today.

Because of the persecution, Christianity was a very real battle and a continuous struggle. The battle is a tough one. There is a lot of suffering involved, but the followers of Jesus soldier on with patient endurance having no doubt at all that they are on the winning side and that God’s Kingdom is being established very powerfully.

It is absolutely victorious because Jesus is in charge. John had a vision of Jesus making it very clear that Jesus is God. As you read these verses and compare them with verses from the Old Testament, we see Jesus is described with images used for God (see Daniel 7.9, Ezekiel 43.2, Isaiah 44.6).

Jesus tells the suffering persecuted Christians not to be afraid. After all, He is the first and the last, the living One from the dead, who is alive for ever more and the only One who can give the gift of eternal life. Their final victory is that if they patiently struggle on with Him, nothing (not even death itself) can destroy them. They are His for ever.

PRAYER: Jesus, we pray for all those, maybe some of us, who are finding the Christian life a struggle at the moment. We especially pray for those being persecuted in Muslim and communist lands. May their knowledge of the victorious, glorious Jesus alongside them all the time encourage them to fight on and patiently endure until they are with Him in eternal life. Amen.

FRIDAY 9TH APRIL
Matthew 28.1-15
He is not here, He is risen as He said

As Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were making their way to the tomb, they were probably wondering how they could move the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. They had come to embalm the body of Jesus. However, they didn’t have to worry; as soon as they arrived at the tomb a violent earthquake occurred and an angel of the Lord, who looked like lighting, rolled back the stone. It was not to let Jesus out. He had already risen and come out. The stone rolled away revealing that the tomb was indeed empty.

The guards had watched diligently all night. They had seen that no-one had come and taken the body away. Later we see that they were tricked and bribed into lying about this.The empty tomb, an historical fact, was proof that Jesus’ word had come true. As He predicted, He had risen. What an overwhelming joy it was for Mary and the other women when they saw Jesus. They just didn’t want to let go of Him. They enjoyed every minute of being with Him and worshipped Him.

Even though we can’t see the empty grave and actually see the risen Lord, He comes to us when we surrender to Him and trust in Him as we repent and trust in the power released when Jesus died on the cross. The risen Lord Jesus comes right into our hearts. The joy of the living presence of Jesus is so wonderful that we soon find ourselves loving Him, adoring Him and worshipping Him.

PRAYER: Risen Lord Jesus, it’s so wonderful to experience your living presence right here in our hearts. Let us stop a while and enjoy your presence as we worship you, then pour out your Holy Spirit upon us and empower us to tell others how wonderful it is to receive you. Amen.

SATURDAY 10TH APRIL
John 20.19-31
Receiving the Risen Lord

The disciples were a frightened bunch of people as they hid behind the locked doors of the upper room. They were frightened because they thought their turn to be crucified could be next. Then, in an instant, all their fears vanished. Jesus was with them. As they saw the evidence of His hands and side, they were intoxicated with a tremendous joy.

Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on them. As He breathed, the power released when Jesus died came into them and cleansed every sin away. As well as forgiving them, it gave them power to forgive others. Real peace was coming into the world. It was wonderful.

Poor old Thomas was not with them when this happened. He found it hard to believe that Jesus was alive. He thought seeing was believing. A week later he, too, was overwhelmed at the presence of the living risen Christ. He saw that He was not just the Jesus who had been crucified come back to life, but He was God; the divine Son of the Father. Thomas spontaneously worshipped Him as he cried out, “My Lord and my God”.

As Jesus said, we are all blessed because we believe in Him, even though we do not actually see those nail holes in His hands and feet. As we trust the written word recorded by St John, we do have real evidence of His being alive. His presence gives us the same feeling of cleanness as all our sins disappear. He gives us a new love for those who have hurt us and we find it easy to forgive them. With joyful hearts we love, we appreciate, we worship Jesus.

PRAYER: Risen Lord Jesus, thank you for breathing your Holy Spirit into our hearts and forgiving us and giving us the power to forgive. We worship and adore our Lord and our God. Make us powerful witnesses of your resurrection. Amen.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 11TH. APRIL
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE

The first Easter Day must have been the most joyful day in the whole of history. Just imagine the extreme joy experienced by the Apostles when the Risen Lord came into the upper room to be with them.

As Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit they experienced the cleansing power of God filling their hearts. They were receiving the power Jesus released when He died on the cross to take all our sins away. Words can’t express the fullness of happiness and joy that they were experiencing. They had been with Jesus for three years never able to fully comprehend his revolutionary teaching now they were fully one with Him, They were saturated with God’s love, joy and peace. Their’s was JOY UNSPEAKABLE.

Poor old Thomas was not with the disciples on Easter day. When they tried to share their experience with him he found it too hard to accept. He just could not believe unless he could see for himself. He would have to put his finger into Jesus’ nail holes before he would believe.

A week later Jesus made Thomas’s joy complete and took all his doubts away. As Jesus opened Thomas’s eyes of faith he gave him a greater insight than the others. He could see that Jesus was God! He didn’t try to look for the nail holes; he just fell down before Jesus crying out, “My Lord and my God!”

Although we too, Can’t see Jesus, we can have exactly the same experience as Thomas and the apostles. As we acknowledge Him as saviour and Lord and believe that He has taken all our sins away and as we invite Him into our hearts with repentant spirits, then Jesus breathes His Holy Spirit into our hearts and their JOY UNSPEAKABLE becomes ours!

(Every time I printed ‘Thomas’ while typing this message the computer automatically said, “Press enter to insert Thomas Hall” God knows each one of our names. When a person asks Jesus to enter his or her heart God automatically enters their name into His Book of Life!)