November 30th 2009
Choose To Be Happy
“Be happy in your faith at all times.”
1 Thessalonians 5:16 (J. B. Phillips)
According to the American Declaration of Independence, the pursuit of happiness is one of our rights. Everyone wants to be happy, but how do we find happiness?
It is only natural to want to be happy – God has built it into us. He is the expert on life, and real happiness depends on obedience to Him. He is the only one who can make us truly happy.
Happiness is not something that just happens to you. It isn’t money or status or success or looks. True happiness is found only in a relationship with Jesus and doing what He says. He said, “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.” (John 13:17). What things? The main thing is our need for God. “How happy are those who know their need for God.” (Matthew 5:3 J. B. Phillips).
David said, “Give me happiness, O Lord, for I give myself to you.” (Psalm 86:4 NLT). Instead of striving for happiness, we must strive to become more and more like Christ because if we abide in Him we’ll be on the road to happiness.
Matthews 5:6 tells us “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” To experience happiness we must pursue righteousness, and that means happiness can be a reality only when based on God and not possessions. We must get as close to Him as we can.
Willing obedience to God’s laws is the only way to achieve true happiness. “Make me walk along the path of Your Commands, for that is where my happiness is found.” (Psalm 119:35 NLT).
Our main goal must be to please God and behave as He tells us. If we make our goal to become more and more like Jesus, then we will be filled with happiness.
“Are any of you happy?” (James 5:13 NLT). Can we sing like Ken Dodd’s song, “I thank the Lord that I possess more than my share of happiness”?
Prayer
Thank you Father for calling me and showing me the way to true happiness. Please help me to do the things you tell me and always walk with you, for I know that only then will I be truly happy.
Amen
Study by Jill Newman
November 29th 2009
Water Into Wine
“Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”.
John 20:30-31 (NIV UK)
The Gospel of John tells an interesting story that took place near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He went to a wedding and turned water into wine. At first glance, this miracle seems unimportant, more along the line of a magician’s trick than dealing with human suffering like Jesus’ other miracles.
How does this miracle of changing water into wine help achieve John’s purpose—to help us believe that Jesus is the Christ? How does it show that Jesus is the Messiah, rather than a mere magician (as the Jewish Talmud later claimed him to be)?
The story begins with a wedding in the small Galilee village of Cana. Weddings were the biggest and most important celebrations among the first century Jewish people—a weeklong party that displayed the social status of the new family in the community.
Weddings were such joyous occasions that when people wanted to describe the blessings of the messianic age, they often used a wedding banquet as a metaphor. In some of his parables, Jesus used the image of a wedding banquet to describe the kingdom of God.
At this wedding in Cana, the wine ran out early, something of a disaster for the host. Mary told Jesus about it, and he responded in an unusual way. He said, “Why do you involve me?”
In other words, what does this have to do with me? “My time has not yet come.”
Even so – even though his time had not yet come – Jesus did something anyway.
In this way, John lets us know that what Jesus is doing is somehow ahead of its time. The messianic banquet is not yet here in its fullness, and yet Jesus was already at work.
Now there happened to be six stone water containers standing nearby, and they were not regular water jars, John tells us—they were the kind the Jews used for ceremonial washing. They held more than 20 gallons of water each—far too heavy for picking up and pouring.
Jesus turned all this ceremonial water, whose sole use was for the ritual purity of those who were cleansed by it, into wine of the highest quality.
What Jesus did at Cana was far more than solve the problem of an embarrassed host who ran out of wine. The ceremonial water represented the Law of Moses, by which sinners were judged guilty and condemned to death. The wine symbolized the blood of Jesus, by which sinners are judged forgiven and called to new life in Christ.
John included this miracle because it symbolized a transformation from the Law of Moses to the new and better covenant in Jesus’ blood.
The point of the miracle is that the death penalty imposed on sinners by the Law of Moses is overwhelmed by Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, by which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit forgave and removed all the sins of humanity through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension on our behalf.
And the ritual purity provided by the Law is overwhelmed by the true righteousness of Christ offered to the Father on our behalf and in our place.
The lesson John wants us to understand is that the spiritual cleansing that comes by Jesus’ blood supersedes the ritual purity of the Law, as well as any other means we might think we have of being righteous before God.
Just as Jesus transformed the ritual water into wine, so he transformed the relationship between humanity and God, replacing the Law that kills with new life in him.
Prayer
Father, thank you for the new start I have received from Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Thank you that the Spirit works in me.
Amen
Study by Joseph Tkach
November 28th 2009
The Grace Of The Lord
12th and last of a series of studies from Philemon
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit”
Philemon 25 (NIV UK)
Paul ends his and Timothy’s message to Philemon with the above phrase. We may skim by it and regard it as just something Paul might write at the end of his letter (which he does often – why not check and see which ones?). It is reminiscent of the last verse of the Bible: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (Revelation 22:21).
What is so significant about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? Why should it be with our spirit and why would John, who wrote Revelation, want it to be with God’s people?
Philemon, who may have been criticized strongly by his fellow Roman citizens and slave owners, for not punishing his runaway slave and for instead welcoming him back as a brother, needed the comfort of the grace of Jesus.
God’s people at John’s time, who faced untold persecution and intimidation for their faith, needed the comfort of the grace of Jesus.
Today’s believers, who stand up for God in a godless society in which they are held in derision, need the comfort of the grace of Jesus.
We need to know that someone sacrificed himself for us. We did nothing to merit it. It was grace pure and simple. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). It is this thought of God’s self-giving that should be with us permanently, that should permeate our very spirit, that gives us comfort and courage to face whatever lies ahead of us.
Without the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ all is pointless and futile.
With the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ our life takes on meaning and purpose, and, above all, with his grace we have hope.
Prayer
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with my spirit and with God’s people everywhere.
Amen
Study by James Henderson
November 27th 2009
Storms And Floods
“He said to the crowd: ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “It’s going to rain,” and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, “It’s going to be hot,” and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpet this present time? ”
Luke 12:54-57 (NIV)
So our Lord and Saviour said.
In the recent chaos caused by the heaviest rain for some time in the UK, much publicity was given to how much the rainy weather and floods were going to cost the economy. Besides ignoring the fact that God is sovereign over the elements, it seems to me that other important factors were overlooked:
1 God can bring the UK and all mankind to a standstill quite easily.
2 We ignore the fact that it is God who gives people the power to get wealth, He it is who has provided mineral riches for humanity to mine and refine, the very air that we breathe, food and water etc.
He it is who “sends the snow in winter, the breezes and the sunshine and soft refreshing rain…. All good gifts around us….” .We have to “plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land”. We are dependant on our Heavenly Father’s provision but, because the carnal mind is enmity against God (Romans 8:7), we prefer to exclude God from our thinking. “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28). Therefore God’s hand in the weather and in the provision of our needs doesn’t enter our thinking; it’s ignored.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for providing for our needs and much more, with an abundance of food in our supermarkets, clean drinking water on tap and the availability of your written word. Please help us remember with gratitude, that you are the source of every blessing. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen
Study by John Armstrong
November 26th 2009
Are You Like A Pumpkin?
“You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.”
2 Corinthians 9:11 (NIV)
The fourth Thursday in November, the 26th this year, is the day Americans around the world celebrate the U.S. national holiday of “Thanksgiving”. The origin of the holiday was the pilgrims’ giving thanks to God when they were saved from starvation in the ‘New World’. The Native Americans brought them wild turkeys and ‘indian corn’, as well as being true friends showing them in the springtime how to plant native crops that would thrive in those conditions.
You will probably see indian corn and brightly coloured gourds in the shops, as well as pumpkins. Although in modern times pumpkins are more commonly linked to ‘Halloween’, pumpkin pie is traditional at Thanksgiving dinner.
Did you know that being a Christian is like being a pumpkin? Another analogy going around by email suggests that God lifts you up, takes you in and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff—including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then he carves you a new smiling face and puts his light inside you to shine out for all the world to see.
And that is truly a cause for Thanksgiving!
Prayer
During this season of harvest, Father in Heaven, we can be truly thankful for the plentiful food that you provide and give you grateful thanks as well as endeavour to share our plenty with those who are hungry.
Amen
Study by Nancy Silcox