MONDAY 8TH MARCH
Joshua 5.2-12
I have taken the shame of Egypt out of you
In Egypt the Israelites had led an earthly, self-indulgent, materialistic life. Even though God did many miracles for them, they were so spoilt and selfish that they continually went against God and made other gods to worship. God delivered them from slavery. He fed them and gave them drink. Their shoes never wore out, even though they wore them for forty years! When they reached the Promised Land, all those who left Egypt had died, except Caleb and Joshua. They died because they didn’t trust God and rebelled against Him. The shame of Egypt had badly affected their lives and polluted them. It was their sons whom Joshua led into Canaan. Before he led them in, he trusted God to remove the shame of Egypt from them. In the ceremony of circumcision they believed God was acting to purify their hearts and make them ready and worthy to enter into the Promised Land.
The next day they celebrated the feast of Passover, thanking God for their deliverance from Egypt. Then they had their first natural meal for 40 years! They ate the produce of the land, a feast of unleavened bread and toasted corn. From then on the supernatural manna stopped falling and they ate from the fruits of the land. They were all very happy and celebrated with much joy! It was such a struggle to get there, but at last they were in the wonderful Promised Land. God had indeed kept His promise to them! Remember that Egypt stands for the self-indulgent, materialistic life of the world. The shame of Egypt must go out of our hearts before we are united with Jesus in Heaven.
PRAYER: Dear Lord, help us to see how much our self-indulgent, materialistic, do-as-you-please way of life is displeasing to you. Come into our hearts and remove the shame of Egypt. Make us holy as you are holy so that we can celebrate with you in Heaven one day, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
TUESDAY 9TH MARCH
Psalm 32
Taste and see how good
the Lord is
Some people, probably most of us, are put off by negative Christianity: a legalistic form of our religion which emphasises all the don’ts - you must not do this; you mustn’t go there, you mustn’t say that, etc.
Negativity is so off-putting. This approach often drives people to do the things God doesn’t want them to do. It’s so much better to be positive. Why? Because the positive always cancels out the negative. So today the word of God invites us to taste and see just how good the Lord is. It’s so easy to do this. It involves entering into a personal relationship with Jesus. If we admit that we are sinners who need God, repent of all our sins and trust that Jesus’ death has taken our sins away, and make a decision to let Him be Lord, or boss, of our lives, then Jesus unites Himself with us.
After having received Jesus as Lord and Saviour of our lives, we enter into a very real living experience of His presence. As we bless the Lord in songs of praise and worship, as we remain humble (humble people are the most receptive to Jesus) and go on to glorify God more and praise His Name, we will discover Him answering so many of our prayers. We truly taste and see the Lord is much more than good! He is magnificent, He is fantastic. There is no experience on earth better than the experience of knowing Jesus. It truly makes us the happiest people on earth.
The joy of His presence pushes out all selfishness and sin and we are set free from anxiety and fear and the things that make life unbearable.
PRAYER: Father, help us to taste and see how fantastic and wonderful you are. Lord Jesus, cleanse our hearts from sin. Holy Spirit, fill us with your love. Holy Trinity, thank you for satisfying us totally with your presence, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 10TH MARCH
2 Corinthians 5.14-21
New creations worthy for God
Yesterday we saw how we can have experiences of total satisfaction by being in a personal relationship with God.
When we are told we must enter such a relationship with God because Christ’s love compels us, we immediately think, “But I’m not good enough”. When Peter, the Apostle, recognised who Jesus was he said, “Depart from me, I am a sinful man, O Lord”. But we do not have to think like this any more.
Even though, because of our sin, we are not worthy, Jesus makes us worthy. Once we have entered into a personal relationship with Him and we dwell in Him and He dwells in us, He makes us into new creations. The old person we were is gone for ever. All our sins are wiped out for ever. It’s as if we have never sinned. We are like newborn babies inside. We have a clean slate, a completely new start in life. Jesus, who was sinless, became sin so that we would have no sin. When He paid the penalty our sins deserve, we were justified by God, we were made worthy to have a relationship with Him. We were made new. We must be enthusiastic to tell everyone we can this fantastic good news. However bad men are, God does not hold their sin against them. God wants to be their friend. He wants to bring them total satisfaction.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. He has given us this ministry of reconciliation. He wants us to act as His ambassadors, showing people that God has forgiven them and if they accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord, they will be completely reconciled to God. God wants to make all of us into new creations.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for showing us how much you love us, so much so that you don’t hold our sins against us. Thank you for becoming sin for us so that we could have no sin and have a perfect relationship with your Father. Come into our hearts and make us certain that every sin is gone and that we are new creations. Help us to share this wonderful good news with many people. Amen.
THURSDAY 11TH MARCH
Genesis 22.1-14
Trust and Obey
We have been thinking this week about our relationship with God. For a relationship with God to endure and last for ever, it must have two essential ingredients; trust and obedience. In our life with God we will find He will permit us to go through many testing times. In these times it’s so important to keep on these two rails, trusting and obeying. Otherwise our derailment will cause us to crash and spoil our relationship with God.
Abraham was put through a huge test. God spoke to Him directly and asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This was extremely hard when we remember that Isaac was born by a miraculous birth when his mother had passed the change of life. He was God’s gift to Abraham (and to the whole world). How could God want Abraham to sacrifice Him? Abraham had absolute trust in God and he was willing to obey God and not question Him. Of course, God never intended for Isaac to be destroyed. His development of His chosen people, the Israelites, depended on his staying alive and marrying and having children. When Israel said to his Dad, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”, Abraham spoke very prophetically when he found himself saying, “God, Himself, will provide a lamb”. When God knew that Abraham had such a strong faith and that he was willing to obey, He stopped him sacrificing Isaac and provided the lamb He said He would. God has given us something we can all really put our faith in and has given us a strong reason to obey so we can maintain a strong relationship with Himself. He did not spare His own Son, like He did Isaac. He was the Lamb God had chosen to take away our sins. This is why we trust in Him. His enormous love for us gives us the motivation to obey Him.
PRAYER: As Abraham trusted and obeyed you, O God, help us to keep on trusting and obeying. Thank you for the story of the lost son, as it shows more than ever the unconditional love you have for us, by the sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on the cross. Thank you for the power of your love that motivates us to obey you, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
FRIDAY 12TH MARCH
Luke 23.1-25
No basis of a charge against Him
Let’s do some more meditating on how the sinless One became sin to bring us into a right relationship with God.
We think about these trials Jesus endured before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, and King Herod. The more they examined Jesus and the evidence they had against Him, the more they saw how innocent He was.
Pilate was trying to do the impossible - find a fault in the faultless One! It was a very frustrating trial for Pilate. He hated condemning to death a man he was certain was innocent and yet he was so fearful of the crowds. A rebellion would bring about his own downfall so he gave in to the High Priests and the angry mob they had stirred up and let Jesus be crucified. The real reason that Jesus went to the cross was because God was the One in charge of the situation. He desperately wanted all of us to share Heaven with Him. The only way He could do it was to let the Son go through hell for us. On other occasions Jesus’ life had been threatened but God protected Him, but now He let Him go forward to die for us.
Jesus did a wonderful exchange for us on the cross. He traded His innocence for our sinfulness. He took all our sin upon Himself, experienced all the devastation and heartache that sin causes and as a free gift, gave us His innocence. He wiped all sin out of us, all guilt, all memory of sin, all that separates us from God. Then He died and all this sin was gone for ever.
PRAYER: O innocent Lord Jesus, thank you for taking our sin and all its pain and suffering into your heart on the cross. Thank you for giving us your innocence as a free gift so we can be with you and your Father for ever. Amen.
SATURDAY 13TH MARCH
Luke 15.1-32
The God who loves sinners
God hates sin but He loves sinners very much. He hates sin because it cuts people off from Him. He hates
sin because its root, selfishness, causes so many people to endure so much suffering. Because Jesus loves sinners so much, He spent a lot of time with them. When the religious people objected, Jesus told them three stories to show the enormous love God has for sinners and how much He wants them to repent of their sin and turn back to Him! In the lost sheep and the lost coin parables we see the sheer joy in God’s heart when lost sinners are found by God and brought back to Him. In the story of the prodigal son, he had really messed up his life. He had spent all his inheritance and been very rebellious and sinful. He deserved to be cut off from his father for ever. Every day the father longed for him and prayed for him. His prayers were answered. When the son was in the depth of despair, grovelling to find food in the pig troughs, his heart was moved to repent and go back to his father. He was willing to give up his position in the family and be a servant. He saw himself as being too unworthy to be accepted as a son again. Here we see how enormous the father’s love for this wayward son was. He ran down the road to embrace his son. He forgave his son and completely reinstated him. He cancelled out the destructive power of sin by his amazing grace and the power of his love.
PRAYER: Father God, I can’t believe it when I see just how much you love us. Even when we mess things up
completely, you are always ready to forgive and reinstate us to be your sons and daughters. Help us to hate sin which does so much damage, but help us to love sinners and do all we can to unite them with you, through Jesus our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
SUNDAY 14TH.MARCH
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
Today is Mothering Sunday, the Church’s Mothers’ Day. (In England it is the national Mothers’ Day.) It is also called Refreshment Sunday because it’s a day to pause in our Lenten fasts and disciplines and be refreshed by the lord. The Simnol Cake, given out, is a symbol of God’s refreshing love.
On this day we show our mothers how much we appreciate them. They lovingly bore us for nine months and after they had given birth to us they never stopped loving us. There is something unique about a mother’s love. Mothers have so much compassion for their children. In Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of Christ”, Mary’s compassionate love of Jesus is shown when she picks Him up and comforts Him, after He had fallen down, when He was a small child; and when she tries to pick Him up and sooth His pain when He falls over carrying the cross to Calvary.
The well known story of the Prodigal Son, we have in today’s Gospel, shows us God the Father’s tremendous
compassionate love for all His Children. In the story the father is heart broken when his son wastes away his life, so much so, that when he sees his son coming home he runs out, as fast as he can, to meet him. After hugging and kissing him he reinstates him as his son and organises a huge party to celebrate the son’s repentance and return. This is a depiction of Good’s attitude to all of us when we fall away from him and turn our backs on Him. While we are still sinners and while we go on breaking His heart He never stops loving us. His compassion for us is so very, very strong that He is always there to welcome us with open arms when we decide to come back to Him. Our return makes Him so glad that He calls on all of heaven to rejoice with Him.
A huge miracle takes place when we decide to come back to God. (Or come to Him for the first time) and accept His Son Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. He re-creates us and makes us into new people as He reconciles us to God. The power to change us was generated on the cross when Jesus took the punishment our sins deserve and died n our place. As Paul says, in our second reading today, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.(Ephesians 2:13)
MONDAY 8TH MARCH
Joshua 5.2-12
I have taken the shame of Egypt out of you
In Egypt the Israelites had led an earthly, self-indulgent, materialistic life. Even though God did many miracles for them, they were so spoilt and selfish that they continually went against God and made other gods to worship. God delivered them from slavery. He fed them and gave them drink. Their shoes never wore out, even though they wore them for forty years! When they reached the Promised Land, all those who left Egypt had died, except Caleb and Joshua. They died because they didn’t trust God and rebelled against Him. The shame of Egypt had badly affected their lives and polluted them. It was their sons whom Joshua led into Canaan. Before he led them in, he trusted God to remove the shame of Egypt from them. In the ceremony of circumcision they believed God was acting to purify their hearts and make them ready and worthy to enter into the Promised Land.
The next day they celebrated the feast of Passover, thanking God for their deliverance from Egypt. Then they had their first natural meal for 40 years! They ate the produce of the land, a feast of unleavened bread and toasted corn. From then on the supernatural manna stopped falling and they ate from the fruits of the land. They were all very happy and celebrated with much joy! It was such a struggle to get there, but at last they were in the wonderful Promised Land. God had indeed kept His promise to them! Remember that Egypt stands for the self-indulgent, materialistic life of the world. The shame of Egypt must go out of our hearts before we are united with Jesus in Heaven.
PRAYER: Dear Lord, help us to see how much our self-indulgent, materialistic, do-as-you-please way of life is displeasing to you. Come into our hearts and remove the shame of Egypt. Make us holy as you are holy so that we can celebrate with you in Heaven one day, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
TUESDAY 9TH MARCH
Psalm 32
Taste and see how good
the Lord is
Some people, probably most of us, are put off by negative Christianity: a legalistic form of our religion which emphasises all the don’ts - you must not do this; you mustn’t go there, you mustn’t say that, etc.
Negativity is so off-putting. This approach often drives people to do the things God doesn’t want them to do. It’s so much better to be positive. Why? Because the positive always cancels out the negative. So today the word of God invites us to taste and see just how good the Lord is. It’s so easy to do this. It involves entering into a personal relationship with Jesus. If we admit that we are sinners who need God, repent of all our sins and trust that Jesus’ death has taken our sins away, and make a decision to let Him be Lord, or boss, of our lives, then Jesus unites Himself with us.
After having received Jesus as Lord and Saviour of our lives, we enter into a very real living experience of His presence. As we bless the Lord in songs of praise and worship, as we remain humble (humble people are the most receptive to Jesus) and go on to glorify God more and praise His Name, we will discover Him answering so many of our prayers. We truly taste and see the Lord is much more than good! He is magnificent, He is fantastic. There is no experience on earth better than the experience of knowing Jesus. It truly makes us the happiest people on earth.
The joy of His presence pushes out all selfishness and sin and we are set free from anxiety and fear and the things that make life unbearable.
PRAYER: Father, help us to taste and see how fantastic and wonderful you are. Lord Jesus, cleanse our hearts from sin. Holy Spirit, fill us with your love. Holy Trinity, thank you for satisfying us totally with your presence, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 10TH MARCH
2 Corinthians 5.14-21
New creations worthy for God
Yesterday we saw how we can have experiences of total satisfaction by being in a personal relationship with God.
When we are told we must enter such a relationship with God because Christ’s love compels us, we immediately think, “But I’m not good enough”. When Peter, the Apostle, recognised who Jesus was he said, “Depart from me, I am a sinful man, O Lord”. But we do not have to think like this any more.
Even though, because of our sin, we are not worthy, Jesus makes us worthy. Once we have entered into a personal relationship with Him and we dwell in Him and He dwells in us, He makes us into new creations. The old person we were is gone for ever. All our sins are wiped out for ever. It’s as if we have never sinned. We are like newborn babies inside. We have a clean slate, a completely new start in life. Jesus, who was sinless, became sin so that we would have no sin. When He paid the penalty our sins deserve, we were justified by God, we were made worthy to have a relationship with Him. We were made new. We must be enthusiastic to tell everyone we can this fantastic good news. However bad men are, God does not hold their sin against them. God wants to be their friend. He wants to bring them total satisfaction.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. He has given us this ministry of reconciliation. He wants us to act as His ambassadors, showing people that God has forgiven them and if they accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord, they will be completely reconciled to God. God wants to make all of us into new creations.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for showing us how much you love us, so much so that you don’t hold our sins against us. Thank you for becoming sin for us so that we could have no sin and have a perfect relationship with your Father. Come into our hearts and make us certain that every sin is gone and that we are new creations. Help us to share this wonderful good news with many people. Amen.
THURSDAY 11TH MARCH
Genesis 22.1-14
Trust and Obey
We have been thinking this week about our relationship with God. For a relationship with God to endure and last for ever, it must have two essential ingredients; trust and obedience. In our life with God we will find He will permit us to go through many testing times. In these times it’s so important to keep on these two rails, trusting and obeying. Otherwise our derailment will cause us to crash and spoil our relationship with God.
Abraham was put through a huge test. God spoke to Him directly and asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This was extremely hard when we remember that Isaac was born by a miraculous birth when his mother had passed the change of life. He was God’s gift to Abraham (and to the whole world). How could God want Abraham to sacrifice Him? Abraham had absolute trust in God and he was willing to obey God and not question Him. Of course, God never intended for Isaac to be destroyed. His development of His chosen people, the Israelites, depended on his staying alive and marrying and having children. When Israel said to his Dad, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”, Abraham spoke very prophetically when he found himself saying, “God, Himself, will provide a lamb”. When God knew that Abraham had such a strong faith and that he was willing to obey, He stopped him sacrificing Isaac and provided the lamb He said He would. God has given us something we can all really put our faith in and has given us a strong reason to obey so we can maintain a strong relationship with Himself. He did not spare His own Son, like He did Isaac. He was the Lamb God had chosen to take away our sins. This is why we trust in Him. His enormous love for us gives us the motivation to obey Him.
PRAYER: As Abraham trusted and obeyed you, O God, help us to keep on trusting and obeying. Thank you for the story of the lost son, as it shows more than ever the unconditional love you have for us, by the sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on the cross. Thank you for the power of your love that motivates us to obey you, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
FRIDAY 12TH MARCH
Luke 23.1-25
No basis of a charge against Him
Let’s do some more meditating on how the sinless One became sin to bring us into a right relationship with God.
We think about these trials Jesus endured before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, and King Herod. The more they examined Jesus and the evidence they had against Him, the more they saw how innocent He was.
Pilate was trying to do the impossible - find a fault in the faultless One! It was a very frustrating trial for Pilate. He hated condemning to death a man he was certain was innocent and yet he was so fearful of the crowds. A rebellion would bring about his own downfall so he gave in to the High Priests and the angry mob they had stirred up and let Jesus be crucified. The real reason that Jesus went to the cross was because God was the One in charge of the situation. He desperately wanted all of us to share Heaven with Him. The only way He could do it was to let the Son go through hell for us. On other occasions Jesus’ life had been threatened but God protected Him, but now He let Him go forward to die for us.
Jesus did a wonderful exchange for us on the cross. He traded His innocence for our sinfulness. He took all our sin upon Himself, experienced all the devastation and heartache that sin causes and as a free gift, gave us His innocence. He wiped all sin out of us, all guilt, all memory of sin, all that separates us from God. Then He died and all this sin was gone for ever.
PRAYER: O innocent Lord Jesus, thank you for taking our sin and all its pain and suffering into your heart on the cross. Thank you for giving us your innocence as a free gift so we can be with you and your Father for ever. Amen.
SATURDAY 13TH MARCH
Luke 15.1-32
The God who loves sinners
God hates sin but He loves sinners very much. He hates sin because it cuts people off from Him. He hates
sin because its root, selfishness, causes so many people to endure so much suffering. Because Jesus loves sinners so much, He spent a lot of time with them. When the religious people objected, Jesus told them three stories to show the enormous love God has for sinners and how much He wants them to repent of their sin and turn back to Him! In the lost sheep and the lost coin parables we see the sheer joy in God’s heart when lost sinners are found by God and brought back to Him. In the story of the prodigal son, he had really messed up his life. He had spent all his inheritance and been very rebellious and sinful. He deserved to be cut off from his father for ever. Every day the father longed for him and prayed for him. His prayers were answered. When the son was in the depth of despair, grovelling to find food in the pig troughs, his heart was moved to repent and go back to his father. He was willing to give up his position in the family and be a servant. He saw himself as being too unworthy to be accepted as a son again. Here we see how enormous the father’s love for this wayward son was. He ran down the road to embrace his son. He forgave his son and completely reinstated him. He cancelled out the destructive power of sin by his amazing grace and the power of his love.
PRAYER: Father God, I can’t believe it when I see just how much you love us. Even when we mess things up
completely, you are always ready to forgive and reinstate us to be your sons and daughters. Help us to hate sin which does so much damage, but help us to love sinners and do all we can to unite them with you, through Jesus our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
SUNDAY 14TH.MARCH
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
Today is Mothering Sunday, the Church’s Mothers’ Day. (In England it is the national Mothers’ Day.) It is also called Refreshment Sunday because it’s a day to pause in our Lenten fasts and disciplines and be refreshed by the lord. The Simnol Cake, given out, is a symbol of God’s refreshing love.
On this day we show our mothers how much we appreciate them. They lovingly bore us for nine months and after they had given birth to us they never stopped loving us. There is something unique about a mother’s love. Mothers have so much compassion for their children. In Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of Christ”, Mary’s compassionate love of Jesus is shown when she picks Him up and comforts Him, after He had fallen down, when He was a small child; and when she tries to pick Him up and sooth His pain when He falls over carrying the cross to Calvary.
The well known story of the Prodigal Son, we have in today’s Gospel, shows us God the Father’s tremendous
compassionate love for all His Children. In the story the father is heart broken when his son wastes away his life, so much so, that when he sees his son coming home he runs out, as fast as he can, to meet him. After hugging and kissing him he reinstates him as his son and organises a huge party to celebrate the son’s repentance and return. This is a depiction of Good’s attitude to all of us when we fall away from him and turn our backs on Him. While we are still sinners and while we go on breaking His heart He never stops loving us. His compassion for us is so very, very strong that He is always there to welcome us with open arms when we decide to come back to Him. Our return makes Him so glad that He calls on all of heaven to rejoice with Him.
A huge miracle takes place when we decide to come back to God. (Or come to Him for the first time) and accept His Son Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. He re-creates us and makes us into new people as He reconciles us to God. The power to change us was generated on the cross when Jesus took the punishment our sins deserve and died n our place. As Paul says, in our second reading today, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.(Ephesians 2:13)