MONDAY 24Th MAY
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Jesus Always Was
Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday and we give thanks to our fabulous God for the way He has been revealed to us. As Christians we have come to know that there is only ONE God but He has been shown to us to exist as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In today’s passage, from the book of Proverbs, we see how Jesus was alive with God from the beginning of time. What the Old Testament calls “wisdom” or “the word” is Jesus, God’s divine Son. As the Creed says, Jesus was “the only begotten Son of God”. He was begotten, not created (see the Athanasius Creed AAPB Page 625 APBA 835).
This means that He always was with His Father before the very beginning of time, together with the Holy Spirit. There was the Father, who is Love, the Son who is Love bound together with the Holy Spirit of Love. John makes this clear at the opening of his Gospel when he says, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word WAS GOD. He was with God from the very beginning (John 1:1) (see also Colossians 1: 15-20).
The most exciting time for Jesus was when He was ‘the craftsman’ at God’s side bringing the whole of creation into being”. “Through Him all things were made” (John 1:3). A special joy came to Jesus when He created mankind. He was filled with delight. Our creation brought so much happiness to God. As we mean so much to the God who delights in us, so we tell Him how thrilled we are to have been created by Him.
PRAYER: Jesus, how wonderful it must have been for you when you, the craftsman at the Father’s side, helped Him in the creation of mankind. It makes us so happy to know that our creation brought you so much joy. As you delighted in us so we delight in you. Thank you so much for making me, me. Amen.
TUESDAY 25TH MAY
Psalm 8
How majestic is your name in all the Earth
We continue to proclaim with tremendous joy what a great, fantastic God has been revealed to us. God is filled with glory. Words just cannot describe how tremendous He is. From Him emanates great power. As we saw yesterday the creation of mankind brought so much joy to the Trinity. It’s like the joy of a mother giving birth to a baby but a trillion, million times better!
He made us special. He made us in His image, just a little less than Himself. He made it possible for us to have a relationship with Him and to love Him and delight in Him as much as He loves us and delights in us!! God loves us so much and regards us so highly that He crowns us with glory and honour and puts us in charge of His whole creation. The whole environment was created for man to enjoy and He was given the task of ruling it.
Satan tries to rob us of the power and authority God has given us. God has given us a way of silencing Satan. It is very simple it is called PRAISE! When God’s children praise Him continually, they are kept in His presence, as God dwells in the praises of His people!
When we praise Him we are filled with His power! Satan cannot destroy us or rob us of what God wants us to have.
PRAYER: Father, we thank you so much and praise you that through Jesus you created us to be your friends so we can delight in you and you delight in us. Help us by the power of your Holy Spirit to rule the whole of creation wisely. Keep us praising you so Satan will not be able to rob us of all you have endowed us with, through Jesus our co-creator. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 26TH MAY
Romans 5:1-5 (6-11)
God pours love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit He has given us
We have seen so far this week what an enormous joy it was for the Father and His Son, Jesus, to create us human beings. What a terrible burden it must have been for God when “all turned away and became worthless” (Romans 3:12 Psalm 14:3).
God’s love never stopped going out to us even when we became sinners and fell short of God’s glory. That’s why He sent Jesus into the world. By His death on the cross Jesus forgave all our sins and put us right with God. He gave us back our worth. Now, as we put all our faith and trust in Jesus and all He did for us, we have access to all God’s grace. Our relationship with Him is re-established.
This relationship is so strong, so powerful that nothing can separate us from God. If we go through suffering and pain it only helps us to love God more. We can rejoice in our sufferings, as our sufferings help us to die to self and have perseverance in our life. This gives us stronger characters and our lives are filled with the hope and assurance of God’s love for us.
God the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps our relationship with God so strong through all the ups and downs of life. He is given to us as we surrender to Jesus and trust in the power of His blood to cleanse us. When He comes, He pours so much love into ours hearts. He gives us power to love, to love God and to love each other. His love makes us so strong!
PRAYER: Father, we sinned and became worthless. Thank you for sending us Jesus to bring us back into a good relationship with you. Thank you for giving us this access to your grace and for pouring so much love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit you gave us, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
THURSDAY 27TH. MAY
Proverbs 8:32-9:10 Psalm 33: 1-9
Whoever finds me finds life
At the birth of Jesus, wise men sought after Him until they found Him. Today the wise thing for everyone to do is to seek Jesus until they find Him!
The most important thing for anyone to do is to find Jesus. It is more important than getting an education and finding a job. It’s more important than money or position. The reason for this is that when you find Jesus you find life - real life. Before people find Jesus they exist. After they have found Him they really live. As they come alive with Jesus then life takes on a wonderful, fantastic new dimension. We were created by God for this new life. Without it people are harmed, mortally wounded, destined for hell.
The new life Jesus gives us brings us so much joy because it is eternal. We know, once we have experienced it, that we will live forever, for the Bible says “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life! (1 John 5:11-12).
Jesus is the source of all life. If we are linked to Him we have His life flowing through us like a branch grafted into a vine. If we are cut off from Him we will shrivel up and die.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for creating us to have life, real life that can never die. May every one of us reading these notes be sure we have found you and accepted you into our hearts as Lord and Saviour. Empower us to help as many people as we can to find the eternal new life in you. Amen.
FRIDAY 28TH.MAY
Ephesians 3:14-21
The Love that surpasses knowledge
Yesterday we saw that it is important for all people to find Jesus to receive eternal life. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws Him and I will raise Him up on the last day” (John 6:44).
For us to get people to come to Jesus to find new life, we have to ask the Father to draw them. We have to get on our knees and pray for them. Paul was very successful in leading many thousands of people to find Jesus because he never stopped praying for them. Today we look at one of his prayers he prayed when he wanted the Father to draw people to Jesus. He prays that the Father, the source of all life, will give each person strength and power that they may know Jesus and have Him dwell in their hearts, and that through faith, Jesus would fill their inner being with His enormous love, that they would be rooted and very strongly established in this love.
He prayed that the love of Jesus, which is so enormous it is beyond measure, would give to the new believers new insights into how absolutely and utterly fantastic life with Jesus really is: that they would be filled with that love which is better than everything else in the world (it surpasses knowledge), and that they would be filled with all the fullness of God!
PRAYER: Father, we know that you are able to do so much more than we can. We pray that you will release all the power needed to bring all the people we know, who do not know Jesus, to come to Him to receive new life with all those tremendous benefits and be covered in a love that surpasses knowledge and is better than anything else in the world, through Jesus our life giver and Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 29TH.MAY
John 16: 12-15
The work of the Holy Spirit - to Make God Known
The work of the Holy Spirit of God is vitally important to us all. His work is to make what the Father and Son have done and taught made known to everyone.
In John 7:37-39 Jesus explains that the Spirit had not at that stage been given because Jesus had not been glorified. When Jesus was glorified, by His death on the cross, His mighty resurrection and His glorious ascension into heaven, then He sent the Holy Spirit down to us on earth. The Holy Spirit proceeds to us from the Father and the Son. From the day of Pentecost to now the Holy Spirit has been at work in His Church.
The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. It is He who filled the minds of the New Testament apostles and evangelists and inspired them to write the books which make up the New Testament. He guided the early church to include just the right materials in the Bible.
The Holy Spirit makes the mind of the Father and the mind of Jesus known to us. Jesus spent a lot of time teaching the disciples. The Holy Spirit helped them remember what is important for us all to know. As they wrote all these things, the Holy Spirit guided their pens.
The Holy Spirit shows us what a wonderful Father God we have and what a fantastic Son Jesus is. He brings glory to them both. He inspires us to praise, love and adore them with all of our hearts.
As the Holy Spirit was with the Bible’s authors as they wrote, so He needs to be with us when we read and discuss the scriptures. One of the most wonderful things that happens to us when we are filled with the Holy Spirit is that the Bible really comes alive for us. This was my own personal experience. He makes us read exactly what we need to read.
PRAYER: Father God and Lord Jesus, pour out your Holy Spirit on us all. May He guide us to all truth by making the Bible come alive for us. May he teach us all what you want us to know. May He show us how great you are to make us to praise and worship and adore you with all of our hearts. We praise you Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
SUNDAY 30TH.MAY
This week’s Message
Why do we a Christians have to believe in the teaching of the Holy Trinity? No one could have possibly invented this doctrine. It is so hard to understand! The answer is very simple. It is because The Holy Spirit has come to us and has guided us into the truth.
He has revealed the nature of God to us. It does not matter if we don’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity because the Holy Spirit makes us sure that it is the truth.
God’s chosen people; the Israelites always believed that there was only one God Who had created the whole world and all that is in it. Under the strong influence of the Holy Spirit the first century Christians soon realised that Jesus was no ordinary man and that He was in fact God. John makes this clear in the beginning of His gospel wen he says, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!” (John 1:1) Paul shows us that Jesus was with God from the very beginning when he says, “By Him all things were created” Colossians 1:16). Jesus Himself spoke of the Holy Spirit as “The Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father" (John 15:26). It was soon recognized that the Other Counselor that Jesus promised was indeed God Jesus made it very clear that He and the Father were ONE. When Phillip said to Jesus, “Show us the Father”, Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me Phillip, even after I have been with you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!”(John 14:9). There is no doubt that the Father and Son are inseparable. They are ONE. The Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father and the Son was one with them as well. From this we come to accept that there are not three God’s but One God revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in three Persons.
As well as being fully God, “True God from True God” as the creed says, Jesus was fully human. He had to depend on the father for everything and His ministry did not begin until He had been filled with the Holy Spirit at his Baptism. He was truly one of us. He was different from us in that He never sinned. Being fully God and Fully man made it possible for Him to go to the Cross and pay the price for our sins when He offered Himself as the sacrifice that got rid of our sins and made us one with God.
When we put all our faith and trust in God the Father, through Jesus His Son, He makes Himself known to us.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Father we praise you, that through Your Word and Holy Spirit You created all things; You reveal Your salvation in all the World through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh; through Your Holy Spirit You give us a share in Your life and love: fill us with the vision of Your glory, that we may always serve and praise You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen
MONDAY 24Th MAY
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Jesus Always Was
Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday and we give thanks to our fabulous God for the way He has been revealed to us. As Christians we have come to know that there is only ONE God but He has been shown to us to exist as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In today’s passage, from the book of Proverbs, we see how Jesus was alive with God from the beginning of time. What the Old Testament calls “wisdom” or “the word” is Jesus, God’s divine Son. As the Creed says, Jesus was “the only begotten Son of God”. He was begotten, not created (see the Athanasius Creed AAPB Page 625 APBA 835).
This means that He always was with His Father before the very beginning of time, together with the Holy Spirit. There was the Father, who is Love, the Son who is Love bound together with the Holy Spirit of Love. John makes this clear at the opening of his Gospel when he says, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word WAS GOD. He was with God from the very beginning (John 1:1) (see also Colossians 1: 15-20).
The most exciting time for Jesus was when He was ‘the craftsman’ at God’s side bringing the whole of creation into being”. “Through Him all things were made” (John 1:3). A special joy came to Jesus when He created mankind. He was filled with delight. Our creation brought so much happiness to God. As we mean so much to the God who delights in us, so we tell Him how thrilled we are to have been created by Him.
PRAYER: Jesus, how wonderful it must have been for you when you, the craftsman at the Father’s side, helped Him in the creation of mankind. It makes us so happy to know that our creation brought you so much joy. As you delighted in us so we delight in you. Thank you so much for making me, me. Amen.
TUESDAY 25TH MAY
Psalm 8
How majestic is your name in all the Earth
We continue to proclaim with tremendous joy what a great, fantastic God has been revealed to us. God is filled with glory. Words just cannot describe how tremendous He is. From Him emanates great power. As we saw yesterday the creation of mankind brought so much joy to the Trinity. It’s like the joy of a mother giving birth to a baby but a trillion, million times better!
He made us special. He made us in His image, just a little less than Himself. He made it possible for us to have a relationship with Him and to love Him and delight in Him as much as He loves us and delights in us!! God loves us so much and regards us so highly that He crowns us with glory and honour and puts us in charge of His whole creation. The whole environment was created for man to enjoy and He was given the task of ruling it.
Satan tries to rob us of the power and authority God has given us. God has given us a way of silencing Satan. It is very simple it is called PRAISE! When God’s children praise Him continually, they are kept in His presence, as God dwells in the praises of His people!
When we praise Him we are filled with His power! Satan cannot destroy us or rob us of what God wants us to have.
PRAYER: Father, we thank you so much and praise you that through Jesus you created us to be your friends so we can delight in you and you delight in us. Help us by the power of your Holy Spirit to rule the whole of creation wisely. Keep us praising you so Satan will not be able to rob us of all you have endowed us with, through Jesus our co-creator. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 26TH MAY
Romans 5:1-5 (6-11)
God pours love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit He has given us
We have seen so far this week what an enormous joy it was for the Father and His Son, Jesus, to create us human beings. What a terrible burden it must have been for God when “all turned away and became worthless” (Romans 3:12 Psalm 14:3).
God’s love never stopped going out to us even when we became sinners and fell short of God’s glory. That’s why He sent Jesus into the world. By His death on the cross Jesus forgave all our sins and put us right with God. He gave us back our worth. Now, as we put all our faith and trust in Jesus and all He did for us, we have access to all God’s grace. Our relationship with Him is re-established.
This relationship is so strong, so powerful that nothing can separate us from God. If we go through suffering and pain it only helps us to love God more. We can rejoice in our sufferings, as our sufferings help us to die to self and have perseverance in our life. This gives us stronger characters and our lives are filled with the hope and assurance of God’s love for us.
God the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps our relationship with God so strong through all the ups and downs of life. He is given to us as we surrender to Jesus and trust in the power of His blood to cleanse us. When He comes, He pours so much love into ours hearts. He gives us power to love, to love God and to love each other. His love makes us so strong!
PRAYER: Father, we sinned and became worthless. Thank you for sending us Jesus to bring us back into a good relationship with you. Thank you for giving us this access to your grace and for pouring so much love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit you gave us, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
THURSDAY 27TH. MAY
Proverbs 8:32-9:10 Psalm 33: 1-9
Whoever finds me finds life
At the birth of Jesus, wise men sought after Him until they found Him. Today the wise thing for everyone to do is to seek Jesus until they find Him!
The most important thing for anyone to do is to find Jesus. It is more important than getting an education and finding a job. It’s more important than money or position. The reason for this is that when you find Jesus you find life - real life. Before people find Jesus they exist. After they have found Him they really live. As they come alive with Jesus then life takes on a wonderful, fantastic new dimension. We were created by God for this new life. Without it people are harmed, mortally wounded, destined for hell.
The new life Jesus gives us brings us so much joy because it is eternal. We know, once we have experienced it, that we will live forever, for the Bible says “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life! (1 John 5:11-12).
Jesus is the source of all life. If we are linked to Him we have His life flowing through us like a branch grafted into a vine. If we are cut off from Him we will shrivel up and die.
PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for creating us to have life, real life that can never die. May every one of us reading these notes be sure we have found you and accepted you into our hearts as Lord and Saviour. Empower us to help as many people as we can to find the eternal new life in you. Amen.
FRIDAY 28TH.MAY
Ephesians 3:14-21
The Love that surpasses knowledge
Yesterday we saw that it is important for all people to find Jesus to receive eternal life. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws Him and I will raise Him up on the last day” (John 6:44).
For us to get people to come to Jesus to find new life, we have to ask the Father to draw them. We have to get on our knees and pray for them. Paul was very successful in leading many thousands of people to find Jesus because he never stopped praying for them. Today we look at one of his prayers he prayed when he wanted the Father to draw people to Jesus. He prays that the Father, the source of all life, will give each person strength and power that they may know Jesus and have Him dwell in their hearts, and that through faith, Jesus would fill their inner being with His enormous love, that they would be rooted and very strongly established in this love.
He prayed that the love of Jesus, which is so enormous it is beyond measure, would give to the new believers new insights into how absolutely and utterly fantastic life with Jesus really is: that they would be filled with that love which is better than everything else in the world (it surpasses knowledge), and that they would be filled with all the fullness of God!
PRAYER: Father, we know that you are able to do so much more than we can. We pray that you will release all the power needed to bring all the people we know, who do not know Jesus, to come to Him to receive new life with all those tremendous benefits and be covered in a love that surpasses knowledge and is better than anything else in the world, through Jesus our life giver and Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 29TH.MAY
John 16: 12-15
The work of the Holy Spirit - to Make God Known
The work of the Holy Spirit of God is vitally important to us all. His work is to make what the Father and Son have done and taught made known to everyone.
In John 7:37-39 Jesus explains that the Spirit had not at that stage been given because Jesus had not been glorified. When Jesus was glorified, by His death on the cross, His mighty resurrection and His glorious ascension into heaven, then He sent the Holy Spirit down to us on earth. The Holy Spirit proceeds to us from the Father and the Son. From the day of Pentecost to now the Holy Spirit has been at work in His Church.
The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. It is He who filled the minds of the New Testament apostles and evangelists and inspired them to write the books which make up the New Testament. He guided the early church to include just the right materials in the Bible.
The Holy Spirit makes the mind of the Father and the mind of Jesus known to us. Jesus spent a lot of time teaching the disciples. The Holy Spirit helped them remember what is important for us all to know. As they wrote all these things, the Holy Spirit guided their pens.
The Holy Spirit shows us what a wonderful Father God we have and what a fantastic Son Jesus is. He brings glory to them both. He inspires us to praise, love and adore them with all of our hearts.
As the Holy Spirit was with the Bible’s authors as they wrote, so He needs to be with us when we read and discuss the scriptures. One of the most wonderful things that happens to us when we are filled with the Holy Spirit is that the Bible really comes alive for us. This was my own personal experience. He makes us read exactly what we need to read.
PRAYER: Father God and Lord Jesus, pour out your Holy Spirit on us all. May He guide us to all truth by making the Bible come alive for us. May he teach us all what you want us to know. May He show us how great you are to make us to praise and worship and adore you with all of our hearts. We praise you Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
SUNDAY 30TH.MAY
This week’s Message
Why do we a Christians have to believe in the teaching of the Holy Trinity? No one could have possibly invented this doctrine. It is so hard to understand! The answer is very simple. It is because The Holy Spirit has come to us and has guided us into the truth.
He has revealed the nature of God to us. It does not matter if we don’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity because the Holy Spirit makes us sure that it is the truth.
God’s chosen people; the Israelites always believed that there was only one God Who had created the whole world and all that is in it. Under the strong influence of the Holy Spirit the first century Christians soon realised that Jesus was no ordinary man and that He was in fact God. John makes this clear in the beginning of His gospel wen he says, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!” (John 1:1) Paul shows us that Jesus was with God from the very beginning when he says, “By Him all things were created” Colossians 1:16). Jesus Himself spoke of the Holy Spirit as “The Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father" (John 15:26). It was soon recognized that the Other Counselor that Jesus promised was indeed God Jesus made it very clear that He and the Father were ONE. When Phillip said to Jesus, “Show us the Father”, Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me Phillip, even after I have been with you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!”(John 14:9). There is no doubt that the Father and Son are inseparable. They are ONE. The Holy Spirit who proceeded from the Father and the Son was one with them as well. From this we come to accept that there are not three God’s but One God revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in three Persons.
As well as being fully God, “True God from True God” as the creed says, Jesus was fully human. He had to depend on the father for everything and His ministry did not begin until He had been filled with the Holy Spirit at his Baptism. He was truly one of us. He was different from us in that He never sinned. Being fully God and Fully man made it possible for Him to go to the Cross and pay the price for our sins when He offered Himself as the sacrifice that got rid of our sins and made us one with God.
When we put all our faith and trust in God the Father, through Jesus His Son, He makes Himself known to us.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
Father we praise you, that through Your Word and Holy Spirit You created all things; You reveal Your salvation in all the World through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh; through Your Holy Spirit You give us a share in Your life and love: fill us with the vision of Your glory, that we may always serve and praise You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen