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MONDAY 27th. JULY
2 Samuel 11.26-12.13
The Lord has taken away your sins

Sometimes when we sin, even very badly, we do not realise how bad it really is. This is what happened to David. David had committed two very serious crimes. He had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had organised the death of Uriah, her husband, so that he could have her as his wife. What David had done grieved the Lord very much. The Lord sent the prophet, Nathan, to David to show him how terribly bad he was for doing such awful things. God gave Nathan a story to tell David. There was a rich man with plenty of sheep and alongside him was a poor man who had nurtured a ewe lamb which became the family pet. When a traveller arrived, the rich man slaughtered the poor man’s ewe to provide food for his guest. When David heard this story it made him very angry. How could such a man be so cruel? He deserved the death penalty and should pay back at least four times over. Then Nathan said straight out, “You are the man.” God said to him, “I have been so good to you in many ways; why were you so cruel?” Listening to the story, which he could see applied to him, David realised just how serious his crime was.

It made him feel so sorry that he was moved to a genuine repentance.

God, who is such an amazingly forgiving God, forgave David and spared him the death penalty. When you think of it, God’s whole kingdom is not made up of carefully selected perfect people, but of people who have been sinners and who have experienced salvation through God’s grace.

PRAYER: O loving, compassionate Lord, help us all to see how serious all our sins really are. Make us truly sorry for them and move us to genuine repentance, so that we can receive Your forgiveness, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

TUESDAY 28th.JULY
Psalm 51
Lord have mercy, I have sinned

David composed this psalm just after the visit from Nathan the prophet. The Lord made him feel so guilty and his heart was filled with a genuine desire to repent. This song that he wrote has been used by thousands of people since. It has helped them to have faith in God to forgive them and cleanse their hearts. David could repent and know he would be forgiven because he knew the character of God. He knew that the Lord was a God of mercy. God loves all He has made so much that He doesn’t want to lose even one of us. He hates and abhors sin because it separates those He loves from Him, but He loves sinners with an unfailing love - a love that is so strong and so powerful that it never fails. God’s heart overflows with compassion.

David also had faith in the power of God to cleanse dirty consciences and to blot out sin from people’s spirits and make them brand new, as if they had never sinned. Later on the power of God to blot out sin and get rid of it completely was poured out when Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for sin. Moved by Nathan’s story, David admitted all his sins. Before we can be forgiven we have to admit our sins and admit how serious they are. All sin separates, so all sin is serious and needs to be gotten rid of. When we have faith in a merciful, compassionate God and when we admit our sins and are willing to turn away from them and repent, God does a miracle in our hearts. The Holy Spirit goes to work to create in us a new heart. He also keeps us close to God to prevent us from sinning.

PRAYER: Lord, pour Your unfailing love into our hearts because we have sinned against You. Cleanse our consciences and create a new heart in us by the power of Your Holy Spirit and the blood of Jesus. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 29th.JULY
Ephesians 4.1-16
Building the Body of Christ

Every Sunday morning in our Eucharist Liturgy we say, “We are the body of Christ; His Spirit is with us.” Let’s pause a few minutes so that we can understand exactly what this means.

When Jesus was on earth He had a body. Through that body God poured out His love on many people. He saved them from sin and He healed them as well as giving them wonderful teaching and building them up to be strong. When this body was put on a cross, was resurrected to life and taken back into heaven, God needed Jesus to have another body on earth. This new body was to be completely different. It was to be a corporate body; a body made up of all those who have responded to Jesus’ love and have accepted Him as Lord and Saviour of their lives. Jesus remains with us as part of His corporate body. He is the head. We are, together, the rest of His body, His hands and feet, His voice and ears, His legs and every other part. Through this huge corporate body Jesus can now minister to literally millions of people every day! Paul reminds us that to be called into Jesus’ body is such a high calling, and trusting in God’s grace we are to live a life worthy of our status.

God gives us all gifts to enable us to function as members of His body. Some have special leadership gifts; apostles (like our Bishops) prophets and evangelists. Mostly these are called to full-time ministry - the clergy. Their task is to equip and prepare everyone else to be effective members of the Body to enable them to administer Jesus’ loving, healing, forgiving, saving power. The tendency has been for the laity which, makes up such a large part of Jesus’ body, to sit back and let the clergy do the entire ministry. This makes a weak body. No army can be victorious if all the fighting is left to the officers!

PRAYER: Jesus, we offer ourselves to You. Take us and incorporate us into Your body. Fill all the clergy with Your Spirit and those special gifts which will be used to train and equip us to be effective members of your body. Amen.

THURSDAY 30th.JULY
Ephesians 4.17-24
Be made new

To enable us to fit into Christ’s body a huge change has to take place in us. We must no longer live as we used to before we knew Christ. When we were separated from God our whole understanding of life was darkened. Because of this there was a hardening in our hearts. We had lost sensitivity. We tended to satisfy the cravings of our human bodies which led us into sensuality. Our lives were not pure, being tarnished with greed and lust, etc. Now that we are not only linked to Christ, but incorporated into His body, that old way must disappear!

It must be put off! The old self which had been corrupted by its evil desires must be thrown away. It must be replaced with a brand new self.

When God sees our willingness to cast off the old self and put all our faith and trust in Him, He does a miracle in us. He creates in us a new self. This is something we can’t do by ourselves. Trying as hard as we can, we cannot get rid of the old and put on the new. Only God can do this as we surrender to Him and trust Him to change us. Of course, He will only change us if we want to be changed. The new selves God creates are truly wonderful - they are like God Himself. God begins this demolishing of the old and creating the new in our minds. This is the part of our bodies which controls us. He begins by making us new in the attitude of our minds!

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, I want to fit perfectly into your body. Because of this I want to be made new. Completely demolish the old self in me and create in me a new heart. Begin by making new the attitude of my mind. Amen.

FRIDAY 31st.JULY
Exodus 16.2-4; Psalm 78.22-28
The Lord gave them bread from Heaven

Sometimes when God leads us out of an old way of life into a new one, we get into a frustrating time. It’s a time when God does not seem to be doing anything in our lives. We’ve given up a lot to become followers of the Lord and for a while there just seems to be nothing but emptiness. This often makes us grumble and complain.

The children of Israel were in a situation like this. God had rescued them from Egypt. Although they had been slaves without any freedom, they had plenty to eat. Now they found themselves in the desert and there was nothing to eat. As they started grumbling, they began to wish they were back in Egypt. If we stay with God, we will find that this wilderness, empty time is only temporary. We need patience to wait and see what God will do next. Usually when our patience begins to wear out, God comes to our aid. This is what happened to the Israelites. God heard their grumbling. He made His presence felt. His glory appeared in a cloud and He spoke to them. He promised them that they would be fed. They would have their dinner at night and breakfast in the morning. That very day God kept His promise. A whole lot of quails flew in which they caught and ate and in the morning the ground was covered with manna - a supernatural food - bread from Heaven - which the Lord provided. As we cry out to the Lord, He will hear our grumblings too and because He loves us so much, He will make Himself known to us and provide all our needs and wants so that when we move out of that empty time, we will taste and see just how good the Lord is.

PRAYER: Father God, when we leave our old life behind, please don’t leave us in the wilderness too long. Come to us, speak to us and feed us, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

SATURDAY 1st. AUGUST
John 6.24-35
I am the Bread of Life

Have you noticed that the things that satisfy us in this world are not completely satisfying? After we have had them and tasted them, we are always hungry and thirsty for more. The devil delights in keeping us feeling unsatisfied. That’s why he tempts us to want more and more.

Most of us wish that we had a lot more money. We would love to be millionaires. Then we meet some millionaires and discover that they are much more unhappy and unsatisfied than we are! The more you get, the more you want and the more miserable you become.

When the crowd that Jesus had fed caught up with Him, He told them that they were only looking for Him because they liked the food He had fed them with. He went on to tell them about a new kind of food. Unlike food that perishes and never really satisfies, this new food would give them complete satisfaction. When they had eaten it they would never be hungry. When they had drunk the new drink they would never be thirsty. The people asked Jesus for a sign as God gave Moses manna (bread) from Heaven. Jesus explained that He was the true bread from Heaven. He was the food that lasts; the food that gives complete satisfaction; the food that endures to eternal life.

How do we eat Jesus? When they said to Jesus, “Give us this bread always,” His reply was, “I am the bread of life, he who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.” We get total satisfaction. Our hunger and thirst are completely met when we come to Jesus and believe in Him.

PRAYER: Thank you Lord that we have tasted and seen how good you are. We have eaten the bread of life by receiving Jesus into our hearts and trusting Him as Lord and Saviour. Thank you for showing us that total satisfaction is only in Jesus. Amen.

SUNDAY 2nd.AUGUST
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE

I always love it when we have a birthday in the family or some other special occasion and we all go out to one of our favourite restaurants. We look at the menu and try to work out what will satisfy us the most. We select the best wine on the list and have great delight in choosing the food that we will enjoy eating the most. We chat away enthralled in each others conversations, then at last the food arrives and the wine is poured As we chew away at the food we delight in every mouthful.(Is your mouth beginning to water as you read this?) When the last course has been finished we sit back and feel so good. At the time it seems that nothing could be more satisfying. Jesus speaks to us today through the Gospel and tells us how wrong we were!

There is something far more satisfying than the very best meal we could have possibly tasted. That something is Jesus Himself. When feed on Him by totally surrendering our lives to him and receiving him into our hearts as Lord and Saviour we consume food that is eternally satisfying. As Jesus said, “I am the bread of life, he who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty.”

In my own experience of life the happiest times I have ever experienced are the times when I have felt the closest to Jesus He makes my life so happy and satisfying. Sometimes, when I get exhausted and things get on top of me, I feel a bit down in the dumps. This prompts me to get closer to Jesus in prayer.

I know He is the only one who can lift me up. I find I can get close to the Lord when I am walking early in the morning. As I pray I feel as if Jesus is walking beside me. He lifts me up into heavenly places. This is when I experience total satisfaction. JESUS MAKES ME SO HAPPY Holy Communion is a special time when we can experience the living presence of Jesus. As we receive Jesus in Holy Communion this Morning lets all taste and see how very ,very satisfying Jesus really is!