MONDAY 10TH AUGUST
1 Kings 2.10-12; 3.3-14
Asking for the right thing

God loves us so much that He gives us some really fantastic promises.  I believe the most fantastic promise in the whole Bible is found in Mark 11.24 where the Lord Jesus says to us, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”  This is like a millionaire giving us his cheque book and saying get whatever you want! This was the kind of promise God made to the newly crowned King Solomon when He said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”  This time God only promised He would give one thing.  The young King’s answer showed that he was very mature.  He wanted to be a good king.  He wanted to be able to do his job properly so he asked God for wisdom and a discerning mind.  He wanted God to enable him to make the right decisions all the time.  This request pleased God very much.  Solomon had not asked something for himself, but for a gift to enable him to help other people and serve them better.  God very quickly answered this request. Solomon was given so much wisdom that he became famous for it.  He was the world’s expert on wisdom! Because God was so pleased with him, He gave him so much more than what he asked for: riches and honour and a long life.

God is a God of Love. If we ask Him for things that will enable us to love and serve others better, this will please Him very much. We will find that we will be so blessed.  God will lavish us with things we never even thought of asking Him for.  When we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, all these things will be added to us.

PRAYER: Father, we thank you that you love us so much that you promise to give us whatever we ask. Help us to be like Solomon and only ask for what will enable us to love and serve you and others, through Jesus our Servant King.  Amen.

TUESDAY 11TH AUGUST
Psalm 34.9-14
Those who seek the Lord lack nothing

The Lord loves everyone very much.  He made us because He wanted people to love.  He chose us because He loved us; He loved all whom He had made.  If we reject His love we miss out on so much.  He does not force Himself onto anyone because He respects us as well as loving us.  But it is really fantastic for us when we respond to His love.  If we fear Him (which means we have a reverent respect for Him) and if we seek Him and give Him our whole lives, then He responds to our love and does so much for us that He doesn’t do for those who haven’t bothered with Him.

The first thing God does for us is that He saves us.  As we repent and turn our backs on all the things that displease Him, He forgives and transforms us into new people.  We become what the Bible  calls, “the righteous.”  This is the same as being born again.

Here are a few of the benefits of being saved into a right relationship with the Lord:

1. He delivers us from all our troubles.
2. He feels for us.  When He sees we are broken-hearted and crushed, He saves us from being crushed in spirit.
3. He protects us in many ways.
4. He promises never to condemn us.

God makes us to be very sincere in our relationship with Him.  He looks after us so well.  It really pays to be God’s close friend.  He makes life so fantastic for us.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for making us and loving us so very much.  May we all respond to your love and give our lives to you.  We repent of all that is against your will and surrender to you willingly.  Save us and take us into the security of your protecting arms, through Jesus our Saviour.  Amen.

WEDNESDAY 12TH AUGUST
Ephesians 5.15-31
Good relationships in the home Between husband and wife

The Bible gives us some general guidelines for good relationships in verses 15-21.  Let’s briefly look at these and follow them. We should be careful in the way we live making sure that we are doing God’s will every day. We should seek stimulation, not from wine or drugs, but by being filled with God’s Holy Spirit.

We should have family prayer times when we come together and worship the Lord in song.  All day long, after the prayer time, we should make music in our hearts to God, rejoicing continuously. We should be continually giving thanks to God for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.  A thankful heart always stays close to the Lord. Then we should submit to one another. This means literally putting ourselves under each other as servants.  It means putting each other before ourselves and doing things to please each other, not wanting the other to please us.

In our relationships as husbands and wives, we must realize the enormous difference between men and women.  The man initiates love and gives himself completely to his wife as Christ gives Himself to us.  (He sacrificed His whole life for us on the cross.)  The woman responds to the love of her husband and this enables her to submit to him as we submit to Jesus.  It’s in the very nature of man to love a woman, but a woman can only love if she is loved.  It’s important for both husband and wife to recognize these differences and respond to them.  The husband needs to be looking for ways to show his wife how much he loves her.  She responds so well to gifts of flowers or chocolates.  These little tokens mean a lot to her.
 
PRAYER: Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit.  Pour tons of love into our hearts that we may submit to each other and love each other the way you planned us to, recognizing our differences.  Amen.

THURSDAY 13TH AUGUST
Ephesians 6.1-9
Children and Parents

We continue to look at relationships within the home and today we look at the relationship between parents and children. This is a very important relationship.  Children left to their own devices and allowed to do their own thing will grow up wild and become a problem for the whole of society.  The job of the parents is to nurture and shape their children to grow up to be like Jesus.  The shaping of the characters of children needs two tools: discipline and love.  These must be ministered in right proportions - too much discipline and the children grow up hard and uncaring; too much love and the children get smothered and spoilt.  Children are not naturally good.  They all inherit original sin.  They have to be trained to be good. This is why the Bible tells children to obey their parents.  They are not only to obey their Mum and Dad, but they have to honour and respect them.  God promises that if they keep this commandment they will have a long life.

They will also have a very happy life. Fathers are to be careful not to exasperate their children.  They must be careful in the way they discipline children - never discipline out of anger. When you discipline children it must hurt the parents more than the kids because you love them and want to make them into better people.

Today we also look at employer/employee relationships.  Employees must obey and respect their bosses who get their authority from God.  Bosses must be fair in their treatment of their workers; no cruel treatment on one hand or favouritism on the other.

We must remember that as we obey parents and bosses, we obey God.  God’s will is for all authority figures to be obeyed and respected.

PRAYER: Father, help all parents to bring up their children with the right amount of discipline and love, all children to obey and respect their parents and workers to obey bosses and bosses to treat employees with all fairness, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

FRIDAY 14TH AUGUST
Proverbs 9.1-6
Come eat my food, drink my wine

Food is so important for us.  It keeps us alive and it makes us strong.  Wine makes us happy and joyful.  This is food for our bodies, the physical part of our make-up. Within each one of us there is a spirit, which is invisible.  It’s a very important part because it is the only part of us that will live for ever.  Our bodies will die but if we look after our spirits properly, they will live for ever. God is speaking to our spirits in today’s verses from Proverbs.  He invites us to come to His table and eat food He has prepared and drink His wine.  This is food, not for our bodies, but for our spirits.  He is speaking figuratively because His spiritual food is invisible. Jesus gave us Holy Communion which enables us to receive the divine food.  As we give thanks for the bread and the wine in Holy Communion and as we remember the sacrifice Jesus made when He died on the cross, the bread and wine become for us the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Jesus’ death and resurrection released this food for us.  We receive it by faith and it is the most wonderful food because what we are receiving is Jesus Himself.  Isn’t that just fantastic!  Without this spiritual food of the life of Jesus, our spirits would die when our bodies die, but with Jesus in them they are eternal.  This shows us the tremendous importance of Holy Communion.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for the table you prepare for us; the table of the cross.  As we come to receive Holy Communion help us to trust in the power of the cross and really believe that our spirits are being fed by the very life of Jesus.  Amen.

SATURDAY 15TH AUGUST
John 6.51-58
Feeding on Jesus

When we eat food, it becomes part of us.  Steak and eggs and cornflakes and milk, etc. become our flesh and bones, our blood.  So it is when we receive the spiritual food of the flesh of Jesus into our spirits.  Jesus becomes part of us.  Jesus in our spirits gives them a very special quality of life.  They become eternal.  Jesus is eternal, so if we eat His body and drink His blood and by faith, take them right into our spirits, they become eternal.

Holy Communion can deteriorate into a ritual which has very little benefit if we are not careful.  We have to have faith when we receive it: faith that believes that it is really Jesus coming into our hearts.  Jesus is not just a snack; He is a whole meal.  For Him to come in and give us eternal life, we must be totally dependent on Him for everything.  Jesus said that He lives because of His total dependence on His Father.  He gave Himself completely to God.  He did this by being constantly in prayer.  Every day He had communion with His Father, linked to Him in meditation and prayer.  Jesus goes on to say that for us to have life, we have to feed on Him. As well as coming to Holy Communion in church every Sunday, we need to have communion with Jesus in prayer every day.  If we set aside quiet times to read His word, then our minds will be filled with Jesus.  We will be thinking of Him all day long.  He will influence everything we do and everything we say.  We will have constant communion with Him. This doesn’t mean we will be like ‘holy Joe’ zombies with our heads in the clouds.  Jesus will enable us to be very loving to everyone and very effective in all that we do.

PRAYER: Living Bread who came down from Heaven, we feed on you.  May our times at the Eucharist and our daily quiet times make us so conscious of your presence all the time that we depend on you to make us love more and be more effective in all we do.  Amen.

SUNDAY 16TH. AUGUST  
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
WE dwell in Jesus and Jesus dwells in us!

What a wonderful God that we have!   He loves us all so much that He wants to have a very close personal relationship with Him all the time. He sent His Son Jesus into the world for the express purpose of bringing us all into this personal relationship.

In the beginning mankind had this relationship.  The story in Genesis about Adam and Eve tells us how our relationship with God was broken.   It was broken by our disobedience. God couldn’t stand being cut off from us. He made us for one purpose only.   He made us to be objects of His love. He made us to be his very own personal friends! For hundreds of years He spoke through, prophets, priests and holy men of the Old Testament.  They drew people closer to God but were unable to bring them into a close relationship with the Almighty.

There was only one person who could bring us back to God. That was His Son, Jesus! At the Last Supper on the night before Jesus went to the cross He showed us how we could re-establish the broken relationship.  He took a loaf of bread and said, “This is my Body Broken for you, do this in remembrance of Me.”   Then He took a cup of wine and said, “This is my Blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.  Do this in remembrance of Me”   He was telling us that He was to be sacrificed for us on the cross.  His Body was to be broken, and His Blood was to be poured out to pay the price for our sins and to receive the punishment our sins deserve. When He died for us Jesus removed everything in us that was preventing us from having a very close personal relationship with God.   He released tremendous power that we can receive today:  Power  to restore our relationship with God.

After Jesus had blessed the Bread and the wine and told us that it was His Body and Blood, He told us to eat and drink it. As we eat the bread and drink the wine in the Holy Communion service, by faith, we receive Jesus into our hearts.  As we eat His flesh and drink His Blood, He remains in us and we remain in Him.   We are bonded to Jesus in a fantastic way.   Through Jesus we are bonded to His Father, for He and the Father are One.  We become very very close personal friends of God.

As we stay close to God He gives us the Holy Spirit and all the power we need to reflect the Character of God!
 

MONDAY 10TH AUGUST
1 Kings 2.10-12; 3.3-14
Asking for the right thing

God loves us so much that He gives us some really fantastic promises.  I believe the most fantastic promise in the whole Bible is found in Mark 11.24 where the Lord Jesus says to us, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”  This is like a millionaire giving us his cheque book and saying get whatever you want! This was the kind of promise God made to the newly crowned King Solomon when He said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”  This time God only promised He would give one thing.  The young King’s answer showed that he was very mature.  He wanted to be a good king.  He wanted to be able to do his job properly so he asked God for wisdom and a discerning mind.  He wanted God to enable him to make the right decisions all the time.  This request pleased God very much.  Solomon had not asked something for himself, but for a gift to enable him to help other people and serve them better.  God very quickly answered this request. Solomon was given so much wisdom that he became famous for it.  He was the world’s expert on wisdom! Because God was so pleased with him, He gave him so much more than what he asked for: riches and honour and a long life.

God is a God of Love. If we ask Him for things that will enable us to love and serve others better, this will please Him very much. We will find that we will be so blessed.  God will lavish us with things we never even thought of asking Him for.  When we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, all these things will be added to us.

PRAYER: Father, we thank you that you love us so much that you promise to give us whatever we ask. Help us to be like Solomon and only ask for what will enable us to love and serve you and others, through Jesus our Servant King.  Amen.

TUESDAY 11TH AUGUST
Psalm 34.9-14
Those who seek the Lord lack nothing

The Lord loves everyone very much.  He made us because He wanted people to love.  He chose us because He loved us; He loved all whom He had made.  If we reject His love we miss out on so much.  He does not force Himself onto anyone because He respects us as well as loving us.  But it is really fantastic for us when we respond to His love.  If we fear Him (which means we have a reverent respect for Him) and if we seek Him and give Him our whole lives, then He responds to our love and does so much for us that He doesn’t do for those who haven’t bothered with Him.

The first thing God does for us is that He saves us.  As we repent and turn our backs on all the things that displease Him, He forgives and transforms us into new people.  We become what the Bible  calls, “the righteous.”  This is the same as being born again.

Here are a few of the benefits of being saved into a right relationship with the Lord:

1. He delivers us from all our troubles.
2. He feels for us.  When He sees we are broken-hearted and crushed, He saves us from being crushed in spirit.
3. He protects us in many ways.
4. He promises never to condemn us.

God makes us to be very sincere in our relationship with Him.  He looks after us so well.  It really pays to be God’s close friend.  He makes life so fantastic for us.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for making us and loving us so very much.  May we all respond to your love and give our lives to you.  We repent of all that is against your will and surrender to you willingly.  Save us and take us into the security of your protecting arms, through Jesus our Saviour.  Amen.

WEDNESDAY 12TH AUGUST
Ephesians 5.15-31
Good relationships in the home Between husband and wife

The Bible gives us some general guidelines for good relationships in verses 15-21.  Let’s briefly look at these and follow them. We should be careful in the way we live making sure that we are doing God’s will every day. We should seek stimulation, not from wine or drugs, but by being filled with God’s Holy Spirit.

We should have family prayer times when we come together and worship the Lord in song.  All day long, after the prayer time, we should make music in our hearts to God, rejoicing continuously. We should be continually giving thanks to God for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.  A thankful heart always stays close to the Lord. Then we should submit to one another. This means literally putting ourselves under each other as servants.  It means putting each other before ourselves and doing things to please each other, not wanting the other to please us.

In our relationships as husbands and wives, we must realize the enormous difference between men and women.  The man initiates love and gives himself completely to his wife as Christ gives Himself to us.  (He sacrificed His whole life for us on the cross.)  The woman responds to the love of her husband and this enables her to submit to him as we submit to Jesus.  It’s in the very nature of man to love a woman, but a woman can only love if she is loved.  It’s important for both husband and wife to recognize these differences and respond to them.  The husband needs to be looking for ways to show his wife how much he loves her.  She responds so well to gifts of flowers or chocolates.  These little tokens mean a lot to her.
 
PRAYER: Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit.  Pour tons of love into our hearts that we may submit to each other and love each other the way you planned us to, recognizing our differences.  Amen.

THURSDAY 13TH AUGUST
Ephesians 6.1-9
Children and Parents

We continue to look at relationships within the home and today we look at the relationship between parents and children. This is a very important relationship.  Children left to their own devices and allowed to do their own thing will grow up wild and become a problem for the whole of society.  The job of the parents is to nurture and shape their children to grow up to be like Jesus.  The shaping of the characters of children needs two tools: discipline and love.  These must be ministered in right proportions - too much discipline and the children grow up hard and uncaring; too much love and the children get smothered and spoilt.  Children are not naturally good.  They all inherit original sin.  They have to be trained to be good. This is why the Bible tells children to obey their parents.  They are not only to obey their Mum and Dad, but they have to honour and respect them.  God promises that if they keep this commandment they will have a long life.

They will also have a very happy life. Fathers are to be careful not to exasperate their children.  They must be careful in the way they discipline children - never discipline out of anger. When you discipline children it must hurt the parents more than the kids because you love them and want to make them into better people.

Today we also look at employer/employee relationships.  Employees must obey and respect their bosses who get their authority from God.  Bosses must be fair in their treatment of their workers; no cruel treatment on one hand or favouritism on the other.

We must remember that as we obey parents and bosses, we obey God.  God’s will is for all authority figures to be obeyed and respected.

PRAYER: Father, help all parents to bring up their children with the right amount of discipline and love, all children to obey and respect their parents and workers to obey bosses and bosses to treat employees with all fairness, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

FRIDAY 14TH AUGUST
Proverbs 9.1-6
Come eat my food, drink my wine

Food is so important for us.  It keeps us alive and it makes us strong.  Wine makes us happy and joyful.  This is food for our bodies, the physical part of our make-up. Within each one of us there is a spirit, which is invisible.  It’s a very important part because it is the only part of us that will live for ever.  Our bodies will die but if we look after our spirits properly, they will live for ever. God is speaking to our spirits in today’s verses from Proverbs.  He invites us to come to His table and eat food He has prepared and drink His wine.  This is food, not for our bodies, but for our spirits.  He is speaking figuratively because His spiritual food is invisible. Jesus gave us Holy Communion which enables us to receive the divine food.  As we give thanks for the bread and the wine in Holy Communion and as we remember the sacrifice Jesus made when He died on the cross, the bread and wine become for us the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Jesus’ death and resurrection released this food for us.  We receive it by faith and it is the most wonderful food because what we are receiving is Jesus Himself.  Isn’t that just fantastic!  Without this spiritual food of the life of Jesus, our spirits would die when our bodies die, but with Jesus in them they are eternal.  This shows us the tremendous importance of Holy Communion.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for the table you prepare for us; the table of the cross.  As we come to receive Holy Communion help us to trust in the power of the cross and really believe that our spirits are being fed by the very life of Jesus.  Amen.

SATURDAY 15TH AUGUST
John 6.51-58
Feeding on Jesus

When we eat food, it becomes part of us.  Steak and eggs and cornflakes and milk, etc. become our flesh and bones, our blood.  So it is when we receive the spiritual food of the flesh of Jesus into our spirits.  Jesus becomes part of us.  Jesus in our spirits gives them a very special quality of life.  They become eternal.  Jesus is eternal, so if we eat His body and drink His blood and by faith, take them right into our spirits, they become eternal.

Holy Communion can deteriorate into a ritual which has very little benefit if we are not careful.  We have to have faith when we receive it: faith that believes that it is really Jesus coming into our hearts.  Jesus is not just a snack; He is a whole meal.  For Him to come in and give us eternal life, we must be totally dependent on Him for everything.  Jesus said that He lives because of His total dependence on His Father.  He gave Himself completely to God.  He did this by being constantly in prayer.  Every day He had communion with His Father, linked to Him in meditation and prayer.  Jesus goes on to say that for us to have life, we have to feed on Him. As well as coming to Holy Communion in church every Sunday, we need to have communion with Jesus in prayer every day.  If we set aside quiet times to read His word, then our minds will be filled with Jesus.  We will be thinking of Him all day long.  He will influence everything we do and everything we say.  We will have constant communion with Him. This doesn’t mean we will be like ‘holy Joe’ zombies with our heads in the clouds.  Jesus will enable us to be very loving to everyone and very effective in all that we do.

PRAYER: Living Bread who came down from Heaven, we feed on you.  May our times at the Eucharist and our daily quiet times make us so conscious of your presence all the time that we depend on you to make us love more and be more effective in all we do.  Amen.

SUNDAY 16TH. AUGUST  
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
WE dwell in Jesus and Jesus dwells in us!

What a wonderful God that we have!   He loves us all so much that He wants to have a very close personal relationship with Him all the time. He sent His Son Jesus into the world for the express purpose of bringing us all into this personal relationship.

In the beginning mankind had this relationship.  The story in Genesis about Adam and Eve tells us how our relationship with God was broken.   It was broken by our disobedience. God couldn’t stand being cut off from us. He made us for one purpose only.   He made us to be objects of His love. He made us to be his very own personal friends! For hundreds of years He spoke through, prophets, priests and holy men of the Old Testament.  They drew people closer to God but were unable to bring them into a close relationship with the Almighty.

There was only one person who could bring us back to God. That was His Son, Jesus! At the Last Supper on the night before Jesus went to the cross He showed us how we could re-establish the broken relationship.  He took a loaf of bread and said, “This is my Body Broken for you, do this in remembrance of Me.”   Then He took a cup of wine and said, “This is my Blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.  Do this in remembrance of Me”   He was telling us that He was to be sacrificed for us on the cross.  His Body was to be broken, and His Blood was to be poured out to pay the price for our sins and to receive the punishment our sins deserve. When He died for us Jesus removed everything in us that was preventing us from having a very close personal relationship with God.   He released tremendous power that we can receive today:  Power  to restore our relationship with God.

After Jesus had blessed the Bread and the wine and told us that it was His Body and Blood, He told us to eat and drink it. As we eat the bread and drink the wine in the Holy Communion service, by faith, we receive Jesus into our hearts.  As we eat His flesh and drink His Blood, He remains in us and we remain in Him.   We are bonded to Jesus in a fantastic way.   Through Jesus we are bonded to His Father, for He and the Father are One.  We become very very close personal friends of God.

As we stay close to God He gives us the Holy Spirit and all the power we need to reflect the Character of God!