MONDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER
Jonah 3.10-4.11
Repent or Perish
After Jonah had been released from being in the whale, he eventually obeyed God and went to the city of Nineveh and gave them a message from God that if they did not repent, the whole city would be destroyed. His preaching was so powerful that the whole city responded to it and they all repented and were saved.
The message of the Bible is still the same today. The penalty for sin is death and the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. If people hear this message and repent of their sins, they receive forgiveness from Jesus because He died to take their sins away. They also receive the wonderful free gift of eternal life.
I am always inspired when I re-read the story of Hudson Taylor. His heart went out to the people of China; so many millions of people who had never heard about Jesus. It concerned him greatly that most of them would be lost eternally. He spent his whole life organizing missionaries to go to every province of China to tell them the good news that Jesus died to give them the free gift of eternal life.
Let’s all have the same concern for all the people around us who do not know our Lord. Let us pray that, together with us, all people everywhere will be moved to repentance and be saved.
PRAYER: Father, you call us all to be missionaries, warning all those who are lost that only Jesus can save them. Empower us with your Holy Spirit. Make us powerful witnesses, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER
Psalm 145
The Lord is near to all who call Him
Pause a moment and take a deep breath. The Lord Jesus is as close to you as the air all around you. As we have to breathe in to take the air into our lungs, so we have to call out to the Lord in prayer to experience His living presence. As oxygen gives life to our blood, so the Lord revitalizes us when we pray to Him. If you pray continuously (1 Thessalonians 5.17), you will always be vibrant with new life.
The Lord loves us so much that He is always watching over us. He is always ready to fulfill the desires of those who respond to His love and fear and trust Him. He hears their cries for help and is always ready to save them and help them. The Lord never stops loving us. Through His amazing grace and forgiveness, He keeps us right with Him all the time. Because He does so much for us, we are always satisfied. He makes sure we never go hungry. When we stumble and fall, He is always ready to pick us up. When we go wrong, He puts us right. The most wonderful thing about God is that He is always faithful. Every promise He makes He keeps. If you read your Bible every day, you will find it full of God’s great and precious promises (2 Peter 1.4). Simply trust His Word and hold onto His faithfulness and your life will be so blessed. God is so good to us. We can’t help but raise our hands to Him (or fall on our knees) and proclaim this prayer of praise.
PRAYER: I will exalt you my God and King, I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER
Philippians 1.20-30
To live is Christ, to die is gain
We saw yesterday that Jesus is so close to us that we can, through prayer, breathe in His life-transforming power. Jesus is so powerful that when we receive Him, He transforms our whole lives. Jesus shows us that with Him in us we no longer need to fear death. As wonderful as our life with Jesus is here on earth, it will be even more wonderful when we depart this life. We will gain an even greater knowledge of Jesus. “We will see Him as He is and we will be like Him” (1John 3.2).
Because Paul knew how wonderful life in heaven would be, he longed to be there. Paul knew all about heaven because of spiritual experiences he had of being in heaven (2 Corinthians 12.14). Even though he longed for heaven, Paul knew that Jesus had a lot more for him to do on earth and it would be quite a long time before he would be taken into glory. The main thing Paul wanted to do with the rest of his life was to increase people’s joy by helping them to receive Jesus and grow in the life of Jesus.
Each one of us can make this a goal of our lives: to show the enormous, fantastic love of Jesus to as many people as we can. Verse 27 reminds us that we can begin to show this love of Jesus to the world by conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. Another way we can convince the world about Jesus is to stand together with one common purpose. Together we spread the good news that Christ our Lord is close to us!
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for the enormous difference you have made to my life after you came in as my Lord and Saviour. I look forward to the day when I will be like you and see you as you are. Help me to share your fantastic, enormous love with as many people as I can. Amen.
THURSDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER
Exodus 16.2-15
God always provides
The Israelites were God’s very special chosen people. He had called them out of Egypt and had miraculously set them free from the Egyptians. However, when they all found themselves stranded in the desert, they didn’t automatically think how good God was, but began to grumble because they were in the desert with nothing to eat. God’s love for them was so great that He answered their grumblings. He made sure they had plenty to eat; roast quail for dinner each night and a special kind of bread for breakfast. All the time they were in the desert, this food appeared. They gathered food each day, except on the Sabbath. God gave them twice as much on the eve of the Sabbath so they didn’t have to do any work on the Lord ’s Day.
If you read John’s chapter six, which begins with the feeding of the 5,000, you will see that Jesus proclaimed that He is the bread of life. We have to eat that bread to keep alive.
Jesus said that we had to eat His flesh and drink His blood to have life in us. This did not make sense until Jesus gave us the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The night before He died He took bread and wine and said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Jesus showed us the miraculous way He was going to feed millions of people.
As we take bread and wine and give thanks in the Eucharist, we know we are being fed the supernatural feast of Jesus’ body and blood. We know that as long as we keep on feeding on Jesus, we will live forever.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for feeding us. You make us so satisfied; we know we will never be hungry or thirsty. Thank you for the miracle of Holy Communion in which we receive you into our hearts by faith so our lives pulsate with your life. Amen.
FRIDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER
Romans 15.7-13
Accept one another as Christ accepted you
So far this week, we have thought a lot about receiving Christ and eating His flesh and blood, and the fantastic difference this makes in our lives. When we receive Jesus, we become one with Him. We have communion with Him. This is Holy Communion! Because we all become one with Him, we also all become one with each other. The Jews found this teaching hard to take. They were an extremely exclusive race and would have nothing to do with other races. Jesus was rejected by the Jewish High Priests because of His ministry to the Gentiles (non-Jews).
Christians are bound by their unity with their Saviour to be one with peoples of all races, all classes, and all people who are willing to be one with Jesus. All unhappiness in the world is caused by people hating other people. We see this in the conflict between the Jews and Palestinians and between the Pakistanis and Indians and extreme Muslims against the rest of the world (as on September 11th). Jesus is their only answer. He is the only one who can give them the power to love and forgive each other. Jesus makes true Christians (those fair-dinkumly linked to Him) one with each other. When we come together in unity, He pours His Holy Spirit into our hearts. He fills us with so much joy and peace. The only hope for the world is for us all to become one with Jesus. Then everyone will be so joyful and happy.
PRAYER: Father of us all, you sent Jesus to come alive in our hearts and make us all one with each other. Help all races and all classes of people realize the unity they have with each other through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
SATURDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER
Matthew 20.1-16
The last will be first and the first, last
There was a feeling of joy in a funeral once conducted. It was for a man called Rex. His daughter was very happy because just three days before he died, he accepted Jesus into his heart as his Lord and Saviour. Even though he was only a Christian for three days on this earth, he enjoys the same eternal life in heaven as those who have known Jesus all their lives. We cannot earn our way to heaven. The Bible is very clear about this.
Heaven is not a reward for attending church services every week or leading a good life. There is only one source of eternal life and this is Jesus. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve. None of us deserves heaven, but Jesus loves us all so much that He wants us to be there. That is why He paid for us. If we accept by faith what Jesus has done for us on the cross, then we can be absolutely and utterly sure that we are going to heaven. The Bible says in John 17.3 that if we know Father God and his Son Jesus, we have eternal life. To ‘know’ means to have a deep personal relationship with Him. Yes, if we have a deep personal relationship with Jesus, we know we are on the way to heaven. Of course, it means staying close to Jesus all our lives. Even if we get to know Jesus a few minutes before we die, we can be sure of our eternal life in heaven. Let’s tell as many people as we can that they need to get to know Jesus before they die, so they can share heaven with us.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for loving us so much that you want us to be with you for ever. Help us all to get to know you and accept the prayers you prayed for us and receive the free gift of eternal life. Help us to tell as many people as we can that they need to get to know you if they want to spend eternity in heaven. Amen.
SUNDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
Eternal life is a free gift from God. It is not earned or deserved. It has to be received by faith, by faith alone. It begins when Jesus come alive in our hearts and of course it can never end!
The Bible says, “God loved the world so much that He gave us His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
In John 17:3, at the beginning of Jesus Prayer at the Last Supper, we read: “This is eternal life. That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This means that if we Know God the Father and His Son Jesus and have a good relationship with them then we have eternal life.
Jesus made it possible for all of us to have this right relationship with God because He went to the cross and payed the price for our sins. Because of our sins we deserve to die. See Romans 6:23 where the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.”
Jesus did not want us to die, He rescued us from death. He gave us the gift of eternal life.
To get the heaven, we all have to receive this free gift. It is offered to everyone but only those who receive it are given it. We receive it by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. I teach my Confirmation candidates that it is as easy as ABCD—Admit, Believe, Consider and Do. We ADMIT that we are sinners who cannot save themselves and be willing to repent. We BELIEVE that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve. We CONSIDER that we really want Jesus to be our Lord, the Boss of our lives. And we DO something about it. We DECIDE to invite Jesus into our hearts and completely surrender our lives to God.
Jesus said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.” When we open our hearts to God and let Him take over we receive the free gift of eternal life. When we receive Jesus, He gives us the right to become God’s children, born again into a new life that can never be destroyed!!!
In the Gospel story today, in which we see labourers who worked only one hour receive the same reward as those who have toiled all day, Jesus shows us that whether we receive Jesus as a child or on our deathbed we will all be given the same free gift of eternal life.
Lets all make sure we have received this generous gift and do all we can to tell everyone the Good news that God wants to give it to them too.
PRAYER: Father we thank you for giving us the free gift of eternal life when Jesus died to pay the price for our sins. Help us all to receive Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Saviour and secure a place in heaven. Help us also to share Jesus with as many people as we can so they share eternal life with us. Through Jesus our wonderful Saviour. Amen.
MONDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER
Jonah 3.10-4.11
Repent or Perish
After Jonah had been released from being in the whale, he eventually obeyed God and went to the city of Nineveh and gave them a message from God that if they did not repent, the whole city would be destroyed. His preaching was so powerful that the whole city responded to it and they all repented and were saved.
The message of the Bible is still the same today. The penalty for sin is death and the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. If people hear this message and repent of their sins, they receive forgiveness from Jesus because He died to take their sins away. They also receive the wonderful free gift of eternal life.
I am always inspired when I re-read the story of Hudson Taylor. His heart went out to the people of China; so many millions of people who had never heard about Jesus. It concerned him greatly that most of them would be lost eternally. He spent his whole life organizing missionaries to go to every province of China to tell them the good news that Jesus died to give them the free gift of eternal life.
Let’s all have the same concern for all the people around us who do not know our Lord. Let us pray that, together with us, all people everywhere will be moved to repentance and be saved.
PRAYER: Father, you call us all to be missionaries, warning all those who are lost that only Jesus can save them. Empower us with your Holy Spirit. Make us powerful witnesses, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER
Psalm 145
The Lord is near to all who call Him
Pause a moment and take a deep breath. The Lord Jesus is as close to you as the air all around you. As we have to breathe in to take the air into our lungs, so we have to call out to the Lord in prayer to experience His living presence. As oxygen gives life to our blood, so the Lord revitalizes us when we pray to Him. If you pray continuously (1 Thessalonians 5.17), you will always be vibrant with new life.
The Lord loves us so much that He is always watching over us. He is always ready to fulfill the desires of those who respond to His love and fear and trust Him. He hears their cries for help and is always ready to save them and help them. The Lord never stops loving us. Through His amazing grace and forgiveness, He keeps us right with Him all the time. Because He does so much for us, we are always satisfied. He makes sure we never go hungry. When we stumble and fall, He is always ready to pick us up. When we go wrong, He puts us right. The most wonderful thing about God is that He is always faithful. Every promise He makes He keeps. If you read your Bible every day, you will find it full of God’s great and precious promises (2 Peter 1.4). Simply trust His Word and hold onto His faithfulness and your life will be so blessed. God is so good to us. We can’t help but raise our hands to Him (or fall on our knees) and proclaim this prayer of praise.
PRAYER: I will exalt you my God and King, I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER
Philippians 1.20-30
To live is Christ, to die is gain
We saw yesterday that Jesus is so close to us that we can, through prayer, breathe in His life-transforming power. Jesus is so powerful that when we receive Him, He transforms our whole lives. Jesus shows us that with Him in us we no longer need to fear death. As wonderful as our life with Jesus is here on earth, it will be even more wonderful when we depart this life. We will gain an even greater knowledge of Jesus. “We will see Him as He is and we will be like Him” (1John 3.2).
Because Paul knew how wonderful life in heaven would be, he longed to be there. Paul knew all about heaven because of spiritual experiences he had of being in heaven (2 Corinthians 12.14). Even though he longed for heaven, Paul knew that Jesus had a lot more for him to do on earth and it would be quite a long time before he would be taken into glory. The main thing Paul wanted to do with the rest of his life was to increase people’s joy by helping them to receive Jesus and grow in the life of Jesus.
Each one of us can make this a goal of our lives: to show the enormous, fantastic love of Jesus to as many people as we can. Verse 27 reminds us that we can begin to show this love of Jesus to the world by conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ. Another way we can convince the world about Jesus is to stand together with one common purpose. Together we spread the good news that Christ our Lord is close to us!
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for the enormous difference you have made to my life after you came in as my Lord and Saviour. I look forward to the day when I will be like you and see you as you are. Help me to share your fantastic, enormous love with as many people as I can. Amen.
THURSDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER
Exodus 16.2-15
God always provides
The Israelites were God’s very special chosen people. He had called them out of Egypt and had miraculously set them free from the Egyptians. However, when they all found themselves stranded in the desert, they didn’t automatically think how good God was, but began to grumble because they were in the desert with nothing to eat. God’s love for them was so great that He answered their grumblings. He made sure they had plenty to eat; roast quail for dinner each night and a special kind of bread for breakfast. All the time they were in the desert, this food appeared. They gathered food each day, except on the Sabbath. God gave them twice as much on the eve of the Sabbath so they didn’t have to do any work on the Lord ’s Day.
If you read John’s chapter six, which begins with the feeding of the 5,000, you will see that Jesus proclaimed that He is the bread of life. We have to eat that bread to keep alive.
Jesus said that we had to eat His flesh and drink His blood to have life in us. This did not make sense until Jesus gave us the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The night before He died He took bread and wine and said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Jesus showed us the miraculous way He was going to feed millions of people.
As we take bread and wine and give thanks in the Eucharist, we know we are being fed the supernatural feast of Jesus’ body and blood. We know that as long as we keep on feeding on Jesus, we will live forever.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for feeding us. You make us so satisfied; we know we will never be hungry or thirsty. Thank you for the miracle of Holy Communion in which we receive you into our hearts by faith so our lives pulsate with your life. Amen.
FRIDAY 16TH SEPTEMBER
Romans 15.7-13
Accept one another as Christ accepted you
So far this week, we have thought a lot about receiving Christ and eating His flesh and blood, and the fantastic difference this makes in our lives. When we receive Jesus, we become one with Him. We have communion with Him. This is Holy Communion! Because we all become one with Him, we also all become one with each other. The Jews found this teaching hard to take. They were an extremely exclusive race and would have nothing to do with other races. Jesus was rejected by the Jewish High Priests because of His ministry to the Gentiles (non-Jews).
Christians are bound by their unity with their Saviour to be one with peoples of all races, all classes, and all people who are willing to be one with Jesus. All unhappiness in the world is caused by people hating other people. We see this in the conflict between the Jews and Palestinians and between the Pakistanis and Indians and extreme Muslims against the rest of the world (as on September 11th). Jesus is their only answer. He is the only one who can give them the power to love and forgive each other. Jesus makes true Christians (those fair-dinkumly linked to Him) one with each other. When we come together in unity, He pours His Holy Spirit into our hearts. He fills us with so much joy and peace. The only hope for the world is for us all to become one with Jesus. Then everyone will be so joyful and happy.
PRAYER: Father of us all, you sent Jesus to come alive in our hearts and make us all one with each other. Help all races and all classes of people realize the unity they have with each other through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
SATURDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER
Matthew 20.1-16
The last will be first and the first, last
There was a feeling of joy in a funeral once conducted. It was for a man called Rex. His daughter was very happy because just three days before he died, he accepted Jesus into his heart as his Lord and Saviour. Even though he was only a Christian for three days on this earth, he enjoys the same eternal life in heaven as those who have known Jesus all their lives. We cannot earn our way to heaven. The Bible is very clear about this.
Heaven is not a reward for attending church services every week or leading a good life. There is only one source of eternal life and this is Jesus. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve. None of us deserves heaven, but Jesus loves us all so much that He wants us to be there. That is why He paid for us. If we accept by faith what Jesus has done for us on the cross, then we can be absolutely and utterly sure that we are going to heaven. The Bible says in John 17.3 that if we know Father God and his Son Jesus, we have eternal life. To ‘know’ means to have a deep personal relationship with Him. Yes, if we have a deep personal relationship with Jesus, we know we are on the way to heaven. Of course, it means staying close to Jesus all our lives. Even if we get to know Jesus a few minutes before we die, we can be sure of our eternal life in heaven. Let’s tell as many people as we can that they need to get to know Jesus before they die, so they can share heaven with us.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for loving us so much that you want us to be with you for ever. Help us all to get to know you and accept the prayers you prayed for us and receive the free gift of eternal life. Help us to tell as many people as we can that they need to get to know you if they want to spend eternity in heaven. Amen.
SUNDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
Eternal life is a free gift from God. It is not earned or deserved. It has to be received by faith, by faith alone. It begins when Jesus come alive in our hearts and of course it can never end!
The Bible says, “God loved the world so much that He gave us His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
In John 17:3, at the beginning of Jesus Prayer at the Last Supper, we read: “This is eternal life. That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This means that if we Know God the Father and His Son Jesus and have a good relationship with them then we have eternal life.
Jesus made it possible for all of us to have this right relationship with God because He went to the cross and payed the price for our sins. Because of our sins we deserve to die. See Romans 6:23 where the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.”
Jesus did not want us to die, He rescued us from death. He gave us the gift of eternal life.
To get the heaven, we all have to receive this free gift. It is offered to everyone but only those who receive it are given it. We receive it by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. I teach my Confirmation candidates that it is as easy as ABCD—Admit, Believe, Consider and Do. We ADMIT that we are sinners who cannot save themselves and be willing to repent. We BELIEVE that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty our sins deserve. We CONSIDER that we really want Jesus to be our Lord, the Boss of our lives. And we DO something about it. We DECIDE to invite Jesus into our hearts and completely surrender our lives to God.
Jesus said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.” When we open our hearts to God and let Him take over we receive the free gift of eternal life. When we receive Jesus, He gives us the right to become God’s children, born again into a new life that can never be destroyed!!!
In the Gospel story today, in which we see labourers who worked only one hour receive the same reward as those who have toiled all day, Jesus shows us that whether we receive Jesus as a child or on our deathbed we will all be given the same free gift of eternal life.
Lets all make sure we have received this generous gift and do all we can to tell everyone the Good news that God wants to give it to them too.
PRAYER: Father we thank you for giving us the free gift of eternal life when Jesus died to pay the price for our sins. Help us all to receive Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Saviour and secure a place in heaven. Help us also to share Jesus with as many people as we can so they share eternal life with us. Through Jesus our wonderful Saviour. Amen.