MONDAY 5TH JULY
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
God speaks to us so simply

It’s so wonderful, so fantastic to be a Christian.  Our religion is the only one worth following.  We should do all we can to persuade everyone to follow Jesus.  What makes it different from all other religions?  What makes it the only way to follow?

The answer is simple.  Christianity is a relationship.  Christians are people who have a personal relationship with God their creator.  This personal relationship is made possible because Jesus came down from heaven to tell us God wanted us to be His friends and to show us how we can be His friends.  We become God’s friends by communicating with Him.  All relationships are built around good communications.

Our reading today tells us how easy it is for us to communicate with the Almighty God.  God longs to speak to each of us because He delights in us and wants to see everything going well in our lives.

To hear God speaking we don’t have to go to some far off place.  God is right here where we are.  He is ever ready to speak to us in our hearts and in our lives. He uses our thoughts and words.  God speaks to us very simply.  Sometimes it’s hard to discern whether it is God speaking or our own thoughts and words.  However, when God does speak to us, we sense very strongly that it is His voice.  God never contradicts Himself.  What we think He is saying to us is His voice when it agrees with the Bible and what He is saying to others around us.

PRAYER:  Father, we thank you so much that you love us so much and delight in us so much you want to speak to us.Thank you that you are so near to us we can hear you speak.  Speak to us now Lord, your servants are listening.  We love you very much.  It’s so good to be your friend, through the help of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.

 

TUESDAY 6TH JULY
Psalm 25
A Trusting Relationship

Yesterday we saw how our relationship with God is made strong because God speaks to us. Today we look at another important building block of our good relationship with God: Trust. All our relationships are built on trust.  If we can’t trust each other we can’t love each other.  We can only have good relationships with trustworthy people.  There is one person we can all have an excellent relationship with - that is God.  He is 100% trustworthy.  He always keeps His promises and is always true to His word.

God can do anything and is powerful in every way.  The more we trust Him the more we experience His powerful helping hand coming to our aid. As we build up a relationship of trust with the Lord, He reveals to us the way He wants us to live.  He gives us directions for our lives.  The more we obey these instructions the stronger our relationship with Him grows.  As the Hymn writer says:

“Trust and Obey,

for there’s no other way

to be happy in Jesus

but to trust and obey”.

As we trust and obey and build this relationship we become the happiest people on earth.  We become so secure.  We can never be shaken and we will never be put to shame.

PRAYER: Father, you are the very best friend we could ever have.  You are so trustworthy and we love you so much.  We put all our trust in you and promise to obey you with the mighty help of your trustworthy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

WEDNESDAY 7TH JULY 
Colossians 1:1-14 
Being strengthened with All Power

When we enter into a relationship with God our lives are built up in a truly magnificent way. As we listen to God, trust Him and obey Him we soon become very, very strong! 

As we link up with God in this most wonderful relationship His power just keeps on and on flowing into us.  God gives us a knowledge of His will and then He gives us all the power we need to carry it out in our lives.  He enables us to live a life worthy of the Lord.  He gave lots of good fruit to grow in our personalities.  As God’s power flows into us it transforms our lives.  He makes us become holy.  He turns us into saints.  He qualifies us to receive His inheritance - a most wonderful place in Heaven!    He doesn’t always promise life  will be easy.  But He always gives us the power to endure the  sufferings the devil tries to inflict on us.  He enables us to be patient through our many trials.

We feel so safe in our relationship with the Lord because we know that He has rescued us from the Kingdom of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son.  He loves us so much.  As we bask in this glorious light, the sunshine of his love, all the darkness of sin is completely dispelled from us - we are set free from it for ever! 

PRAYER:  Father, thank you for rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and bringing us into the Kingdom of your Son. Fill us with your power, transform our lives, and qualify us all to share in your promises, through Jesus our loving Saviour.  Amen.

 

THURSDAY 8TH JULY 
Amos 7:7-17
A Plumb Line or Spirit-Level

Builders always have to make sure the walls of the buildings they are making are straight.  They do this by using a plumb line or in modern days a spirit-level. As we grow up in our relationship with God, we too need a plumb line or spirit-level to make sure we are going the right way and our lives are not all crooked!  What we really need is a Spirit level!  If we have the right level of the Spirit in our lives then we will be okay.  The Holy Spirit works in our lives to keep us holy; to keep us straight.   

Every day, at the end of the day, we should all  take time out to examine ourselves, or at least let God’s Holy Spirit in to examine us. So often we do not realise we are going wrong.  Many thoughts and habits slip into our lives which cause us to go wrong.  They don’t seem bad at all at the time, but when we examine our lives we realise we have grown all crooked. 

The more often we examine our lives and let the Holy Spirit level us out the more correct our lives will be.  Let’s not neglect self examinations and confession to enable us to keep growing straight.

PRAYER: Psalm 139:23-24

“Search me O God and know my heart.  Test me and discover my thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” by the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

 

FRIDAY 9TH JULY
Luke 9:37-50
The Lord is the Greatest

The most wonderful thing about God’s Kingdom is that every subject in His Kingdom is just as important to God as the other.  We are all called to be saints. The Disciples were arguing about who was the greatest.  Jesus absolutely astounded them when He took a child and said, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me and who ever welcomes me welcomes He who sent me.”

As the least of us opens our hearts to Jesus and lets Jesus’ love work in us by doing simple things in His Name, then we are considered to be most important by Jesus. The least of us becomes just as important as the greatest of the great.

Let’s cherish the thought that each of us reading these notes is so very, very important to Jesus.  It’s the little things we do (and so often neglect to do because we don’t think they are important) that are very important to Jesus. If we think we don’t have enough faith we are in good company. Look in verse 4 - we see the Disciples too had little faith. All we have to do is to offer our lives to Jesus, let Him in and Trust Him to help us to do the little things that are so important to Him.

PRAYER: Come into my heart Lord Jesus.  Fill me with your love.  Show me lots of little things I can do for you - little things to help others, little things that are so important to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 

SATURDAY 10TH JULY 
Luke 10:25-37
Who is my neighbour?
The Good Samaritan

I began this week’s notes saying how wonderful it is to be a Christian because our religion is based on a relationship with God. He wants us to see that this relationship is measured by how we relate to others.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that we build up a relationship with God by loving those around us and not by putting all our effort into religion. 

The Priest and the Levite (member of the Choir) were both very religious.  They were bent on getting to Church in time.  But they failed to show they had a good relationship with God.  They saw the needs of the suffering man and walked on the other side of the road. 

Everyone thought the Samaritans were not acceptable to God.  The Jews wouldn’t have anything to do with them because they had gone into wrong religious practices, yet when the Samaritan saw the suffering man of a violent robbery, his heart was filled with compassion.  He went out of his way to help the suffering man.  He passed the test, he was considered great in God’s eyes because he did little things to alleviate the sufferings of others. 

PRAYER: Father, as we build on our relationship with you, let’s make sure we have the right balance of religious activity and loving kindness towards others. Help us to put aside lots of time to worship You  and read Your word so we can become closer to You and love You more.  Help us to make sure Your love flows so strongly into our hearts that we have so much compassion we can drop everything to help those who need us, through Jesus our wonderful Good Samaritan. Amen.

 

SUNDAY 11TH.JULY
This week’s Message

As I have often said God loves us all very much and delights in us unconditionally, However if we obey His commands He delights in us even more. Today we are learning how we can all make God really happy.  The first thing we have to do is to Love God with all our hearts and with all our souls.  We have to be 100% committed to him in love.  It does not stop there. Because God loves all of us equally, His strong desire is for all of us to love each other in the same way that He loves us and we love Him.

In the Old Testament of the Bible God commands us to love our neighbours (Which mean everyone we have anything to do with) as our selves.  Jesus New Testament commandment goes much further than this.  He says, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”(John 13:34)   He gave this commandment at the Last Supper when He was preparing to give Himself to us on the Cross.  As we look at the cross we see just how much Jesus loves us all. He gave his life for us, took the punishment our sins deserve and payed the price for us, giving us the free gift of eternal life.

When we receive all that Jesus has done for us on the cross by faith and fully accept Him into our hearts as our Lord and Saviour, He gives us the power to keep his commandment to love everyone as He loves us. God released this power for us when Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead.  I call this THE INCRIDBLE POWER TO LOVE.

With Jesus in us giving us this incredible power to love, we can all be Good Samaritans! Good Samaritans are those who are always ready to meet the NEEDS of others whatever the cost is to themselves. Let’s meditate on today’s gospel and be ever ready to go out of our way to help the needy of this world. Let’s help to make poverty history.

Remember the more we love others and give to them the more we delight our Heavenly Father and the more He delights in us. Let’s all go out of our way to make Him very happy.

PRAYER :

Father you promise that if we draw close to You,  You will draw close to us because you loved us so much that  you gave us Your Son to take all our sins away and make us one with You. Give us the incredible power to love that Jesus released when He died on the cross. Please make us all Good Samaritans. Amen 

MONDAY 5TH JULY
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
God speaks to us so simply

It’s so wonderful, so fantastic to be a Christian.  Our religion is the only one worth following.  We should do all we can to persuade everyone to follow Jesus.  What makes it different from all other religions?  What makes it the only way to follow?

The answer is simple.  Christianity is a relationship.  Christians are people who have a personal relationship with God their creator.  This personal relationship is made possible because Jesus came down from heaven to tell us God wanted us to be His friends and to show us how we can be His friends.  We become God’s friends by communicating with Him.  All relationships are built around good communications.

Our reading today tells us how easy it is for us to communicate with the Almighty God.  God longs to speak to each of us because He delights in us and wants to see everything going well in our lives.

To hear God speaking we don’t have to go to some far off place.  God is right here where we are.  He is ever ready to speak to us in our hearts and in our lives. He uses our thoughts and words.  God speaks to us very simply.  Sometimes it’s hard to discern whether it is God speaking or our own thoughts and words.  However, when God does speak to us, we sense very strongly that it is His voice.  God never contradicts Himself.  What we think He is saying to us is His voice when it agrees with the Bible and what He is saying to others around us.

PRAYER:  Father, we thank you so much that you love us so much and delight in us so much you want to speak to us.Thank you that you are so near to us we can hear you speak.  Speak to us now Lord, your servants are listening.  We love you very much.  It’s so good to be your friend, through the help of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.

 

TUESDAY 6TH JULY
Psalm 25
A Trusting Relationship

Yesterday we saw how our relationship with God is made strong because God speaks to us. Today we look at another important building block of our good relationship with God: Trust. All our relationships are built on trust.  If we can’t trust each other we can’t love each other.  We can only have good relationships with trustworthy people.  There is one person we can all have an excellent relationship with - that is God.  He is 100% trustworthy.  He always keeps His promises and is always true to His word.

God can do anything and is powerful in every way.  The more we trust Him the more we experience His powerful helping hand coming to our aid. As we build up a relationship of trust with the Lord, He reveals to us the way He wants us to live.  He gives us directions for our lives.  The more we obey these instructions the stronger our relationship with Him grows.  As the Hymn writer says:

“Trust and Obey,

for there’s no other way

to be happy in Jesus

but to trust and obey”.

As we trust and obey and build this relationship we become the happiest people on earth.  We become so secure.  We can never be shaken and we will never be put to shame.

PRAYER: Father, you are the very best friend we could ever have.  You are so trustworthy and we love you so much.  We put all our trust in you and promise to obey you with the mighty help of your trustworthy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

WEDNESDAY 7TH JULY 
Colossians 1:1-14 
Being strengthened with All Power

When we enter into a relationship with God our lives are built up in a truly magnificent way. As we listen to God, trust Him and obey Him we soon become very, very strong! 

As we link up with God in this most wonderful relationship His power just keeps on and on flowing into us.  God gives us a knowledge of His will and then He gives us all the power we need to carry it out in our lives.  He enables us to live a life worthy of the Lord.  He gave lots of good fruit to grow in our personalities.  As God’s power flows into us it transforms our lives.  He makes us become holy.  He turns us into saints.  He qualifies us to receive His inheritance - a most wonderful place in Heaven!    He doesn’t always promise life  will be easy.  But He always gives us the power to endure the  sufferings the devil tries to inflict on us.  He enables us to be patient through our many trials.

We feel so safe in our relationship with the Lord because we know that He has rescued us from the Kingdom of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son.  He loves us so much.  As we bask in this glorious light, the sunshine of his love, all the darkness of sin is completely dispelled from us - we are set free from it for ever! 

PRAYER:  Father, thank you for rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and bringing us into the Kingdom of your Son. Fill us with your power, transform our lives, and qualify us all to share in your promises, through Jesus our loving Saviour.  Amen.

 

THURSDAY 8TH JULY 
Amos 7:7-17
A Plumb Line or Spirit-Level

Builders always have to make sure the walls of the buildings they are making are straight.  They do this by using a plumb line or in modern days a spirit-level. As we grow up in our relationship with God, we too need a plumb line or spirit-level to make sure we are going the right way and our lives are not all crooked!  What we really need is a Spirit level!  If we have the right level of the Spirit in our lives then we will be okay.  The Holy Spirit works in our lives to keep us holy; to keep us straight.   

Every day, at the end of the day, we should all  take time out to examine ourselves, or at least let God’s Holy Spirit in to examine us. So often we do not realise we are going wrong.  Many thoughts and habits slip into our lives which cause us to go wrong.  They don’t seem bad at all at the time, but when we examine our lives we realise we have grown all crooked. 

The more often we examine our lives and let the Holy Spirit level us out the more correct our lives will be.  Let’s not neglect self examinations and confession to enable us to keep growing straight.

PRAYER: Psalm 139:23-24

“Search me O God and know my heart.  Test me and discover my thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” by the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

 

FRIDAY 9TH JULY
Luke 9:37-50
The Lord is the Greatest

The most wonderful thing about God’s Kingdom is that every subject in His Kingdom is just as important to God as the other.  We are all called to be saints. The Disciples were arguing about who was the greatest.  Jesus absolutely astounded them when He took a child and said, “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me and who ever welcomes me welcomes He who sent me.”

As the least of us opens our hearts to Jesus and lets Jesus’ love work in us by doing simple things in His Name, then we are considered to be most important by Jesus. The least of us becomes just as important as the greatest of the great.

Let’s cherish the thought that each of us reading these notes is so very, very important to Jesus.  It’s the little things we do (and so often neglect to do because we don’t think they are important) that are very important to Jesus. If we think we don’t have enough faith we are in good company. Look in verse 4 - we see the Disciples too had little faith. All we have to do is to offer our lives to Jesus, let Him in and Trust Him to help us to do the little things that are so important to Him.

PRAYER: Come into my heart Lord Jesus.  Fill me with your love.  Show me lots of little things I can do for you - little things to help others, little things that are so important to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 

SATURDAY 10TH JULY 
Luke 10:25-37
Who is my neighbour?
The Good Samaritan

I began this week’s notes saying how wonderful it is to be a Christian because our religion is based on a relationship with God. He wants us to see that this relationship is measured by how we relate to others.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that we build up a relationship with God by loving those around us and not by putting all our effort into religion. 

The Priest and the Levite (member of the Choir) were both very religious.  They were bent on getting to Church in time.  But they failed to show they had a good relationship with God.  They saw the needs of the suffering man and walked on the other side of the road. 

Everyone thought the Samaritans were not acceptable to God.  The Jews wouldn’t have anything to do with them because they had gone into wrong religious practices, yet when the Samaritan saw the suffering man of a violent robbery, his heart was filled with compassion.  He went out of his way to help the suffering man.  He passed the test, he was considered great in God’s eyes because he did little things to alleviate the sufferings of others. 

PRAYER: Father, as we build on our relationship with you, let’s make sure we have the right balance of religious activity and loving kindness towards others. Help us to put aside lots of time to worship You  and read Your word so we can become closer to You and love You more.  Help us to make sure Your love flows so strongly into our hearts that we have so much compassion we can drop everything to help those who need us, through Jesus our wonderful Good Samaritan. Amen.

 

SUNDAY 11TH.JULY
This week’s Message

As I have often said God loves us all very much and delights in us unconditionally, However if we obey His commands He delights in us even more. Today we are learning how we can all make God really happy.  The first thing we have to do is to Love God with all our hearts and with all our souls.  We have to be 100% committed to him in love.  It does not stop there. Because God loves all of us equally, His strong desire is for all of us to love each other in the same way that He loves us and we love Him.

In the Old Testament of the Bible God commands us to love our neighbours (Which mean everyone we have anything to do with) as our selves.  Jesus New Testament commandment goes much further than this.  He says, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”(John 13:34)   He gave this commandment at the Last Supper when He was preparing to give Himself to us on the Cross.  As we look at the cross we see just how much Jesus loves us all. He gave his life for us, took the punishment our sins deserve and payed the price for us, giving us the free gift of eternal life.

When we receive all that Jesus has done for us on the cross by faith and fully accept Him into our hearts as our Lord and Saviour, He gives us the power to keep his commandment to love everyone as He loves us. God released this power for us when Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead.  I call this THE INCRIDBLE POWER TO LOVE.

With Jesus in us giving us this incredible power to love, we can all be Good Samaritans! Good Samaritans are those who are always ready to meet the NEEDS of others whatever the cost is to themselves. Let’s meditate on today’s gospel and be ever ready to go out of our way to help the needy of this world. Let’s help to make poverty history.

Remember the more we love others and give to them the more we delight our Heavenly Father and the more He delights in us. Let’s all go out of our way to make Him very happy.

PRAYER :

Father you promise that if we draw close to You,  You will draw close to us because you loved us so much that  you gave us Your Son to take all our sins away and make us one with You. Give us the incredible power to love that Jesus released when He died on the cross. Please make us all Good Samaritans. Amen