Be patient with God, he knows what he's doing (2) - By Jack Lewis

As a follow up to last weeks post about being patient with God, I am this week going to look at how, even when things are not progressing the way we want, God is still working for our good. Numbers 22 shows a great example of this. It’s the story of Balaam’s talking donkey, whose stubbornness saved Balaam’s life, even though he thought that the donkey was being stupid and embarrassing him. Sometimes we can feel like that, like everything is not panning out the way we want it to, but God is the one who’s in control and it will be for our eventual good; all we need to do is be patient and go along with God’s plan. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11”

 We mustn’t try to rush things either; by rushing we are more or less asking for trouble; and if we don’t learn to wait on God, we will never experience the full joy that he wants us to. Paul writes in Romans 8:25: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” He certainly knew the key!

So, when we go through the times of feeling like everything we do is going wrong, remember that, although it’s hard to see now, God is working things out for our eventual benefit. Ask for faith, joy, and patience, and in his perfect timing you will get to the other side!

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

 

Following God plan not ours By Nathan Jukes

As Christian’s it is important that we follow God’s plan and not our own. If we follow our own plan we will end up going down the wrong path. Then we need to ask God to come and lead us out. If we don’t we will go  keep going  down the wrong path. God can help us get out of anything. We just have to cry out to him and he will save us.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. Psalm 199:105 (NIV)

God word the bible is a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path. If we want to follow God then we need to read the bible. If we don’t we won’t be able to see where we are going and go down the wrong path. If we read the bible and follow God then we will walk to in the light of God. But if we don’t we will live in the darkness of the evil one.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to by my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Mathew 16:24-26 (NIV)

So if we want to follow God, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus. We will have to suffer like Jesus suffered, denying ourselves to follow him. It will be hard, but it will be all worth it in the end. Don’t just give God part of your life but all of it.

Hey I'm changing the day!

Hey I am going to change the day from Mondays to Tuesday! Because  I don't seem to have the time on Monday! I will try to do Tuesday if I can!

Be patient with God, he knows what he's doing (1) - By Jack Lewis

In the Bible, there are a lot of miracles recorded, and many of them happened very quickly. Things like the parting of the Red sea, Naaman’s healing, Lazarus rising from the dead, water coming from the rock, the woman touching Jesus’ coat and being healed, Jairus’ daughter, demons being cast out, and Jesus’ ascension. I could go on! What I mean is that all of these miracles happened instantly at God’s command, and these miracles tend to be our favourites. That’s why we can find it frustrating when the miracle we are praying for is taking so long. But don’t worry, God doesn’t always do things instantly, he sometimes decides to do it slowly.

 In Joshua 3, the Bible tells us the amazing story of all the Israelites crossing the river Jordan. This was in the flood season, so the river would likely have been about a mile wide and 150ft deep! You don’t just wade across a river like that. Now, Joshua’s instructions from God were to have the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant stand in the river, and it would stop flowing. The Israelites must have been watching and waiting; expecting to see the river just part, like the crossing of the Red sea. But this time, that was not what God had planned. Instead, a long way upstream, the river stopped flowing, and after a couple of hours, the river went down a few feet. Then another few, and so on until the river was dry and crossable.

Miracles don’t have to happen instantly! If you want another miracle like this, remember that the great flood didn’t happen overnight, Noah and his family would have been on that boat for about a year.

Moral of the story? Sometimes we just have to be patient and wait for God to complete what he’s already started; he knows what he’s doing!

God's always there, even when it doesn't feel that way. - By Jack Lewis

As Christians, we will all have times where God feels absent from us. I have found that many times in my life, and I’m sure every Christian you ever meet will have too. The thing that we can often think is that we are useless; and we wish we could be more like some of the Bible characters who led great Christian lives. But God does not feel that way about us; he doesn’t think we are bad because of it. It is part of being a Christian.

The biggest myth about it all is the thought that we “Just aren’t good Christians.” That isn’t true though, the greatest Bible characters all had times when they felt distant from God, and they will never be considered bad Christians. David, who was called “A man after God’s own heart”, wrote a whole Psalm expressing how he felt distant from God (Psalm 42). Solomon, who was the wisest and richest man in history, had times where he went away from God. (That isn’t an excuse for us to stop following God, though!) Paul obviously had times where he didn’t just feel distant from God, he hated him; yet God forgave him and he went on to write half the New Testament. And if that doesn’t convince you that even the greatest Christians had their own struggles with feeling far from God, remember that Jesus himself felt like God had left him in the Garden of Gethsemane. If God’s own son temporarily felt like he didn’t care about him, then I think we can safely say that, however distant we feel from God, we are not worthless because of it!    

Wake up by Nathan Jukes

So many Christian’s these days are asleep. The things that go on in the world today is bad, And let some Christians don't seem to know that we are in the last days.  We should be awake to the fact of Jesus return. Lots of Christians are so asleep to it. You should only have to take one look at the world and you should know where it is going. We have to wake up, and not close our eyes to the bad things in the world.

 This is why he said:  Wake up, sleeper rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Ephesians 5:14 (NIV)

 What this verse is saying? It is saying that if we are asleep we need to wake up. Being asleep is like being dead. So that's why it says rise from the dead.  When we wake up, Christ will shine on us When we are awake and not asleep. We can see things that we can't see when are asleep. It is like being enlightened to light after being blind for a long time. So live in the light of Jesus and don’t fall asleep. 

Fruit of the Spirit 9; Self control - By Jack Lewis

This is the last post in my series of the Fruits of the Spirit; I hope you have enjoyed reading them. The last fruit is self control, which I personally think it’s one of the most important. Basically, it works alongside our conscience as our first defence against sin; it will help us keep out of all kinds of trouble. We will all be tempted in life, and without self control we will just give in to these temptations, which make us easy prey for Satan. Once he realises we are weak, he will keep coming back to us with more and more harmful offers until our lives are a total wreck. All because we lack self control. That first defence against sin is vital, and that first defence against sin is self control.

In Proverbs 25:28, the Bible gives a great analogy: “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” In those days, a city without walls would just be invaded by enemies, and we are no different, only our walls are made of self control. We can either have no walls, and enemies can walk right into the midst of our soul; we can have small walls made out of wood, which can keep out the simple stuff, but when we are besieged they provide little protection; or we can have towering walls made out of really strong material which can keep out anything we choose to keep out. Self control is like that, it’s what provides us with the necessary protection to keep from being easily targeted be Satan. Quite simply it’s something that will be a huge asset to us in life; it will stop us doing harmful stuff our conscience tells us is wrong to do.

In Matthew 7:13-14, the Bible talks about a narrow road that leads to heaven, and a wide road that leads to destruction (hell). Imagine walking along the narrow road, but seeing through gaps in the fence many exciting things on the wide road. We know we shouldn’t go onto the wide road because we know where it goes, but we just really want to step over onto that destructive path; it looks so fun. Our conscience is screaming away at us not to do it. We hear it’s warning, but what is the only thing that will stop us from following our selfish desires and crossing over? Self control. That may sound like a totally hypothetical scenario, but it’s not. It’s a very real analogy. It happens to us every day; we get tempted to go off that Godly path and on to the way of death.

 
Going back to the city walls thing, we must remember that, even if one or two powerful things should manage to break through, we do have another weapon that will help us, when asked; that weapon is God’s power. The person who is trying to break into our city is God’s #1 enemy, the Devil. But we know from the Bible that God is more powerful than the Devil, so if we ask him we know we have the most powerful weapon we can imagine, 1000000 times better than any nuclear bomb the government could create. Though that doesn’t mean that we won’t ever be tempted, it just means we have a better chance of winning those battles. (That day when we are no longer tempted will come when we get to the perfect “new earth” http://godatthecentreofourlives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-second-coming-by-jack-lewis.html#disqus_thread) Also remember that it takes time to build up self control, people didn’t just arrive at a good location for a city, and simply have giant walls rise up out of the ground around them; the walls would have taken years to build. Neither did people arrive on earth and instantly make laser guided missiles by clicking their fingers; it took thousands of years of inventions to get to this stage. Thankfully it won’t take us that long to build up self control, but it won’t happen overnight. It will take weeks and months of prayer and practice to build the walls around ourselves big enough to resist most of the temptations we face. Remember that the more we are self controlled with the small things, the easier we will find it to resist the big temptations we come across. Also if we are struggling with one big temptation, every time we are in a situation where we could give in to that thing, remember that if we manage to resist it we will find it far easier to resist next time, and eventually get to the stage where we are no longer tempted.