FTN_121009_181009

MONDAY 12TH OCTOBER
Job 38.1-7, 34-41
When the Lord speaks

This week we are looking at the book of Job. In Chapter 23 we see that Job couldn’t understand his suffering. The well-meaning friends could not help him, but only made him feel unjustly condemned. Their conservative, religious answers lacked compassion and love. The young man, Elihu, came along and helped Job see that he would only come to faith in God and understand the meaning of suffering through the help of the Spirit of God. Elihu went on to tell him that he could get the answers to his problems straight from God. He said to him, “For God does speak, now one way and then another, though man may not perceive it”. Eventually the kind leading of Elihu led Job to hear God speaking to him. God spoke to him out of a storm and our reading today picks up part of what God said to him.

When we read through this rather difficult book of the Bible and compare what God says in chapters 28, 39, 40 and 41, it’s almost the same as what the preachers said to Job in the other chapters. The interesting thing is that Job didn’t come to have faith in God, which made his problems fade away, until he heard God speaking to him personally. This is true of every Christian. We will come to unwavering faith only when we actually hear God speaking to us. We know when He does. For a long time I had read the Bible a lot, listened to many preachers and absorbed a lot of teaching but I had little real faith in God. Then one day the Bible started to come alive for me. As I read the words, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory. He will rejoice over you with gladness and will renew you in His love. He will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3.17), my faith began to grow, and the more I have heard the Lord speaking to me, the more my faith has grown. Allelujah!

PRAYER: Dear Father, thank you that you are such a loving God. You long to speak to us. Open our spiritual ears that we may hear you speak and come to an undying faith, through Christ, the living Word of God. Amen.

TUESDAY 13TH OCTOBER
Psalm 91
Be with me Lord when I’m in trouble

Yesterday we were reminded that we come to have an indestructible faith in God when we hear Him speaking to us personally. Today we see that when we come to hear Him speak and develop a very real personal relationship with God, we come under His protecting power. God is in control of the whole universe, so it’s only natural for us to understand that He takes a very special interest in those who become His friends and that He is ever willing to guide and protect them and to look after them!

This has been very much my own personal experience and the experience of my family. No doubt many of you who read these notes have experienced the wonderful, protective arms of God looking after you and keeping you safe. If not, start now to put yourself under the shelter of our wonderful God. Say to the Lord, “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I trust.” Put all your faith and trust in God and God promises you that you will never ever be disappointed! When you live every day in the presence of God, no harm will befall you. God sends His angels to look after you. You will be protected in many ways. The reason why God protects you is because you love Him so much and put Him first in your life! He looks after you because you acknowledge His name! Even if we go through hurtful times, we know one thing is absolutely certain. God will bring us to eternal salvation. He will never let us go. We will be His for ever.

PRAYER: Lord God, we make a decision to dwell with you and make you our refuge and stronghold. We put all our faith and trust in you and love you and acknowledge your name. Thank you for bringing us under your protecting power and assuring us of our salvation, through Jesus our mighty Saviour. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER
Hebrews 5.1-10
Jesus, the source of eternal salvation

Yesterday we were given much faith in the protecting power of God. We were made to feel very safe and secure because we have chosen to love God and put all our faith and trust in Him. Yet there is one question that needs to be answered. Why did Jesus have to suffer and why do Christians often go through a lot of pain and suffering? If God loves us so much, why doesn’t He keep His promise and free us from every bit of suffering? The answer is very simple. God does protect us; very much so, but He protects us by stopping the suffering from destroying us!

I once visited a lady who was very crippled. She was very bitter and resentful. She had allowed her suffering to destroy her. She cursed itand blamed God and everyone else. She was so unhappy. Compare her with Joni Erickson. She suffered just as much but she put her whole trust in Jesus. He saved her by stopping her suffering from destroying her. Rather, she was purified by her suffering. Her life has been an inspiration to millions of sufferers.

Jesus embraced suffering with open arms when He went to the cross. It didn’t destroy Him. He learnt obedience from what He suffered. He was shown to be pure in His suffering. It showed how perfect He really was. Through it He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. He gave us all the power we need to stop suffering from destroying us. As we embrace suffering as He did, we, too, are purified from all selfishness and made perfect to be with Jesus for ever.

PRAYER: Jesus, you endured so much suffering for me. Fill me with the power to embrace suffering in such a way that it will purify me and never destroy me, that I, being made pure, may shine as a light in this world and enjoy the next with you for ever. Amen.

THURSDAY 15TH OCTOBER
Hebrews 6.19-7.3
Hope - the anchor or capstan for the soul

God cannot lie. That would be absolutely impossible. When He makes a promise, He will always keep it. One of the most important things that God promises is that all who have received Jesus and become sons and daughters of God will inherit eternal life. Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for us. It was a very costly price. We can, therefore, be absolutely and utterly sure that all of us who are born again Christians will end up in Heaven.

When we put our faith and trust in Jesus, it’s as if we are ships going through the sea of time attached to an anchor. The anchor is our hope. The anchor is Jesus. This hope is different from worldly hope. We hope for many things, but they don’t always happen. There is a sense of uncertainty in the best of human hopefulness. Not so with the hope that Jesus gives us. It’s 100% certain. The anchor we are attached to when we link our lives to Jesus is in the very presence of God. It’s not in the shifting sands of human hopefulness but in the immovable rock of God’s presence. In fact, this anchor is not an anchor at all but a capstan. The anchor rope is attached to the capstan, a very strong pole on the wharf inside the harbour. When we are attached to this capstan, Jesus, who is in Heaven itself, the Holy of Holies, we are 100% safe.

Jesus is also described as a High Priest. The Latin word for priest is Pontifex, which means “Bridge Builder”. Jesus built a bridge between Earth and Heaven. It takes us into the very presence of God. God promises to keep us with Him for ever.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for promising us eternal life. Give us hope that we will be with you for ever by attaching us to Jesus, the capstan of our souls, anchoring us to you for ever. Amen.

FRIDAY 16TH OCTOBER
Isaiah 53.4-12
He bears our punishment and puts us right

The most wonderful promise God has ever made is contained in this chapter of the Bible. Here the Father promised all that His Son, Jesus, would do to secure our salvation and make a heavenly destination a very strong possibility for all of us who believe in Jesus.

Jesus did so much on the cross. When the nails were driven through His hands our sins were forgiven; when He was crushed with the pain of all our sins and all our wickedness, all the consequences for our iniquities were done away with. We deserved to be punished, but He was punished in our place. Because of the terrible wounds He suffered, He promised to take away our sicknesses and to heal us.

God loved us all so much that He didn’t want to see any of us going to hell and having to suffer the consequences of our sins in all eternity.

That’s why it was His will for Jesus to be so badly crushed and suffer so much. His suffering set us free from eternal suffering. After His suffering, Jesus rose again and saw the light of life. He was so wonderfully satisfied because He had made it possible for all of us to see the light of life in Heaven for ever. Now Jesus, having paid the price for us, is in Heaven constantly praying that every one of us will respond to His love and choose to follow Him and be His for ever.

PRAYER: Father, thank you for letting your Son, Jesus, suffer so much for us. Thank you that He died in our place and took all the suffering our sins deserved. Give us the faith to believe that He has completely forgiven us and put us right with you so that we will be in Heaven with you for ever. Amen.

SATURDAY 17th. OCTOBER
Mark 10.35-45
Servant Leaders

Two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, were trying to get to the top. They wanted Jesus to give them the most important positions in His Kingdom. They were marred with the sins of ambition and pride. Soon they were to hear that there is no room for self-importance and arrogant pride with those who come close to God through Jesus. No! They have to be willing to put their feet into the footmarks of Jesus and go through the same sort of suffering as He went through. Jesus was training His disciples to be leaders. They were to be completely different from any other leaders in the world. The pattern of leadership was to be radically changed. It was to be leadership through servanthood. Normally slaves and servants do everything their leaders tell them to. Now the leaders are to make themselves servants. The way through to greatness with Jesus is to become great as He became great. He didn’t come to be served but to serve and give His life to people. So now God wants us who He chose to be leaders to willingly be everyone’s slave. This means that we must look up to everyone and make everyone we are leading feel really important.

Jesus made Himself nothing so that we could be lifted up to be with Him for ever. We have to make ourselves very humble and do all we can for those God has called us to lead to Him. We are all to be priests - bridge builders - through humble servanthood. May we be the bridge many will cross to find Jesus.

PRAYER: Jesus, we love you so much. You emptied yourself of all greatness and became our servant. Help us to humble ourselves and become servants of all, ever willing to do all we can for those you call us to lead to you, that we may be bridges people can cross to find you. Amen.

SUNDAY 18th OCTOBER
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE

James and John, two of Jesus close disciples were very ambitious.. They wanted to be top dogs in Jesus Kingdom. They were seeking the privilege of being second and third in the chain of command. People often seek leadership positions because they love the feeling of importance it gives them. They love it when everyone looks up to them.

When they made a request to Jesus to be top leaders He really put them in their place.

He told them that to be His leaders they had to become servants!!! This must have been unthinkable in their culture in which slaves and servants were of the very lowest in the social order.

The wonderful thing about Jesus is that what He taught He put into practice in His own life. He was the greatest person that ever lived on the earth, yet the Bible says this of Him: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a SERVANT” (Philippians 2:6-7)

As a servant Jesus was obedient to the Father and was willing to go to the cross and to give His life as a ransom for many. He took the punishment our sins deserve so that we could become His children and inherit eternal life.

The job of a servant is to look up to the people they serve and make them feel important.

Each one of us is so important to Jesus. Words can’t describe how much He love us and how highly He thinks of us. That is why He became our servant. He lowered Himself to push us up.

We are all called to be servants! Today let’s all offer ourselves to Jesus to be His servants! In all our dealings with people lets do all we can to be their servants. In little ways, let’s make them really feel important. Let’s pledge ourselves never to look down on others but to lift them up.

This is a wonderful way of leading people to Jesus.

When we hear the voice of Jesus calling, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

Let’s ALL respond and say “Here am I. Send me!” (See Isaiah 5:8)

In our parish life Jesus is looking for more servants. Let’s think about it during this week and offer ourselves to give up some of our time and talents for Jesus.