Who are we? Dr Robert McQuillan is recognised as an inspiring encourager, counsellor, mentor to ministries and Bible teacher ministering meaningfully on the prophetic edge. Robert and Maureen, a gifted communicator with an uncanny insight into knowing 'where people are at', delight to bless and encourage God's people and ministries... and touch the hearts of the unchurched in the marketplace. Contact: OnlinerConnect@gmail.com
(July 08, 2024) Norman and Margaret Moss share another precious meditation…
I (Norman) was suddenly taken by surprise at church on Sunday when a couple of young men trained a movie camera on me and asked, ‘What one word would you use to describe your father?’
‘Reliability’ I found myself answering.
Now I would have liked to have had more opportunity to say other things as well. After all, how can you describe a beloved Dad in one word? My father had many other qualities for which I honour him.
However it was a good answer in that it also describes our Father in heaven.
(June 30, 2024) Robert McQuillan sincerely shares…
Many years ago when a Pentecostal pastor whom I had never before requested me to teach his church on faith healing, I really threw him when I initially declined. When asked why, I replied that although faith is involved, godly healing is not faith healing but divine healing.
I went on to share that there had been times when I prayed for healing for those who either had no real faith or very little, even non-Christians, and by God’s grace they got relieved, either at the time – in the case of pain – or as I learned later.
Several scriptures in both Testaments shine with God’s compassion – and His Son’s. I’d simply exercised faith as I claimed God’s compassion, quoted His word and prayed in Jesus’ name.
Compassionate Divine Healing Faith in God is tops… but even Christians can be weak in exercising of faith!
There’s an old saying –‘Life is life… and bad things can/may happen even to Christians!’ And there’s a number of things that can result in people being sick, such as the following –
(June 29, 2024) Mama Lava again shares her heart encouraging readers…
What is your definition of home – where you hang your hat? Is home where your loved ones are? Is it where your heart is?
Home –Consistent Topic Recently, two of my daughters needed to find new homes. My son’s health scare had him confined to his home. My travels took me away from home. Home has been a consistent topic of conversation and prayer.
If you’re a regular visitor to the Back Porch, you read about how my plans for the blog were stifled last March, and you know I expected God to shine through with His truth this spring. Wow! He really drove something home (pun intended) for me, and I cannot wait to tell you about it.
The anticipation has been growing, as I’ve waited for the ability to type it out. My shoulder might be angry at me for the length of this post today, but my fingers can barely contain what my heart is bursting to share! I badly needed a break, a holiday! And we went to Hawaii.
Home – Embracing Memories It was our first day back in Hawaii on vacation and with the time change, we were up before dawn. We wandered down to the beach to watch the sun come up. From Waikiki, the sun rises over the famous Diamond Head crater, and it is a sight to behold. We were in crowded company, on a volcanic rock jetty, as the sky began to brighten. Everyone had a camera of some sort, trained to the east.
That is everyone except me. I stole away alone, to the other side of the jetty, focusing my eyes west with my emotions. It was my first glimpse of home. For 10 years, I lived on the west side of Oahu. We raised our kids there and served God in many capacities there. I had left a chunk of my heart there when we’d moved to the U.S. mainland. And I hadn’t faced this in years.
Now, as I stood there, looking westward toward home, with the rest of the crowd facing east, my heart racing as if it would run across the water to reunite with the lost pieces of itself in an embrace of each memory living there, tears running unabashedly down my face, God spoke. He whispered to me, ‘That’s right. Keep your eyes on home. It is where the sun will eventually set.’
Home – Heavenly Citizenship! I knew He didn’t mean the west coast of Oahu, but heaven! It was picture perfect reminding me that ‘… our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Phillipians 3:20).
While so many are distracted by the glitz, glimmer, and gold that arises in this world, sparkling and wooing the masses, you and I need to keep our eyes on our eternal home, my friends. We must stand alone and face away from the popular directional pull. At the end of the day, the sun will set on our lives and the Son will draw us home.
God pressed that message into my heart on day. Over the following couple of weeks, He reinforced it!
My husband Michael and I talked about the mountains we currently call home. Our town, nestled in the pines, with daily antics of chipmunks, birds, squirrels, deer, and other forest creatures, feels like home… except when compared to Oahu. We feel more at home on the islands than we do in the mountains.
Home – Jesus’ Forecast But Hawaii is not our home either. We do not yet understand what home means. That level of contentment – that kind of belonging – will only be ours when we arrive at the home Jesus is preparing for us in heaven.
Jesus said so in John 14:2-3: ‘My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’
The subject of home came up several times in Hawaii, as we reminisced with friends and family. I shared the story I’ve just told you.
But God had more up His proverbial sleeve. Only my husband knows this part of the story. It is why, shoulder limitation or not, tears flowing down my face (because of God’s goodness, not surgery pain), I had to type this out for you today.
It was late afternoon on our last day of vacation. I wanted to put my toes in the water one last time. We walked from our room to a not-so-crowded portion of the beach, where I left my husband to swim and I did my favourite thing; I walked the shoreline, feet in the water, occasionally getting splashed by the waves up to my waist. I was facing west, with home in view, struggling to fathom goodbye.
Home – Heart Centred Suddenly, I kid you not, a heart-shaped hole opened in the clouds and light from the late afternoon sun streamed through, landing on that earthly spot where my heart feels most at home. If you know me, you know the significance I place on hearts in nature. It was all I could do not to sink to my knees in the surf. God lovingly reminded me, on my last day of vacation as He had on the first, the value of keeping my eyes on home.
I took this photo of the light from the heart-shaped opening in the clouds alighting on my heart’s earthly home so I wouldn’t have to wonder later if I imagined it. I was reminded of Ecclesiastes 3:11a, ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.’
Our earthly ideas of home are beautiful because God has placed a longing in our hearts for the home Jesus is preparing for us. And just as the sun was lower in the sky this time than the dawn of that first day, theSon is getting set. We can’t lose sight of what matters.
Do you find yourself distracted; aligned with the crowd, gawking at what beckons most glamorously? Are you overly obsessed with your home on earth? Or, even more dire, have you failed to ever turn your heart toward a heavenly home?
Joshua’s warning to Israel speaks to us today! ‘But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15).
Home – Choose Today! What’s your definition of home? Mine has changed! Home is where my Saviour is.
We will all land somewhere across eternity’s shore but mustchoose on this side.
One place will have none of the comforts of home; no place to hang a hat, no love.
The other is where your heart was created to dwell forever. Where have you chosen?
I’m keeping my eyes focused there until the sun sets.Will you join me? Do send me sendsendyour email address.
My friends, thank you for coming along on this journey of truth, hope, and faith. If you aren’t privy to the events that led to this series, you can catch that here: I’m Looking Forward to Looking Back… Will You Join Me? I’ve been so appreciative of your grace and prayers during this time in my life.
________________________________________________ Mama Lava delights to share openly and honestly from her heart. She sincerely believes in making the big world a bit smaller through caringly connecting, that Jesus wants to remove our anxieties and give us His joy. In her encouragements, Mama Lava regularly tells of life experiences from an unapologetically Christian viewpoint. Link: Mama Lava’s Back Porch (Doses of Maternal Love). _________________________________________________
(June 27, 2024) Abigail Aguilar shares good news …
Kap Chatfield was selling his Give Tankstank tops on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras when he ran across the Baptist lady who ruined his good vibes.
‘It was an avalanche of debauchery: drunk people, people doing drugs, people throwing up on the sidewalk,’ Kap says on his YouTube channel. ‘All of a sudden I see the giant wooden cross in the middle of the road. It was a glaring juxtaposition. These fire-breathing Baptists were the biggest buzzkill.’
He approached one of the Christian ladies. ‘Who do you think you are?’ he challenged her. ‘Are you saying I’m not a good person? I’m running this (T-shirt) company and we’re giving money to kids in Nicaragua.’
‘You’re not doing that for God’s glory,’ the lady responded. ‘You’re doing that for your own glory.’
(June 27, 2024) Richard Winter encourages sharing Jesus’s good news…
It’s amazing to be immersed in a new culture. As a young man I was posted with the RAAF to Malaysia – I was surrounded by new sights and smells that at first seemed to be an assault on all my senses… and the people had better suntans than me!
It became obvious I’d better learn the Malay language very quickly! I was to discover one interesting word that was added to everything said in virtually every sentence – Lah. Just a small word, but one of emphasis: a statement and a question in one-word ie…
‘Want to drink, lah!’ can also be ‘Want to drink, lah?’
‘Want to eat, lah!’ – ‘Want to eat, lah?’
‘Can you see that,lah!’ – ‘Can you see that, lah?’
Many of us are operating in a different culture than that we grew up in and we need to know the cultural differences so we can understand and operate in that new culture. I was to spend a lot of time immersed culturally so that I would know what to do, what to expect, how to fit in!
(June 20, 2024) Dr Jim McClure shares more great insights on the Lord’s Prayer –
In The Lord’s Prayer-Part 1 God’s Dominion posted earlier this month, I wrote that Jesus was teaching His disciples in response to their request, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ It is such a short prayer – we can recite it in 30 seconds – but it is also very profound because it covers the foundational principles that should be present in all our praying. So really… it is not a prayer that can be adequately prayed in 30 seconds!
Notice that Jesus did not say, ‘This is what you pray,’ but ‘This is howyou pray.’ Obviously, it is not wrong to pray this actual prayer, but Jesus gave it to the disciples to provide some basic prayer principles, not as a strict formula to be followed.
(June 12, 2024) Angeline Selvakumari encourages us to be available to the Lord, to ‘be donkeys’ for Him…
I can’t believe we are already completing the first half of 2024 so quickly. Time flies so fast. I think that is why the Bible teaches us to use our time wisely: ‘Making the very most of your time’ (Ephesians 5:16Amp). Message Bible emphasises ‘Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!’
Purpose No one can know time better than Jesus. He knew when to keep His purpose for coming to the world a secret, and when to declare it openly.
(June 10, 2024) Richard Winter shares ‘food for thought’…
Imagine this setting… Great restaurant, soft music, your intended seated beside you, his hand reaching over and touching you, and voice filled with passion says, ‘I love you.’
Or settings like these…
Men bonding with men who jovially say, ‘Man, I love you. What a game!’ after a great football match.
Women doing something similar when they go shopping with another woman.
Ever looked for such settings in the New Testament? They’re not to be found!
Jesus never said, ‘I love you’ to the woman at the well.
Nor is He recorded as saying, ‘I love you’ to the disciples.
(June 06, 2024) Dr Jim McClure teaches… and challenges –
How good is your prayer life?
I guess that for most of us prayer is lower on the ladder of importance in our lives than we would be prepared to admit.
We excuse ourselves by thinking that we are so busy that other urgent things make demands on us and, sadly, prayer is set to one side to be attended to later.
Many churches place an emphasis on the importance of their regular prayer meetings and sometimes Christian organisations plan citywide, and even nationwide, prayer meetings and Christians are encouraged to commit to them. However, valuable and important such gatherings may be, the number of participants is ultimately not the determining factor in the effectiveness of prayer.
(June 05, 2024) Carol Round shares encouragement regarding dark times…
What an encouraging scripture is Psalm 91:4 – ‘He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.’
Tornado sirens were blaring as my dog and I took refuge in my walk-in closet. My cell phone was beeping with updates. A tornado was headed to our city.
It wasn’t the first time I had taken refuge while a tornado was nearby. I experienced a tornado on March 30, 2016, while taking shelter in my walk-in closet. It has been eight years since an EF2- tornado hit my house, leaving damage in its path. Surely, it wouldn’t happen again.
As the tornado roared over my house, I prayed. Then, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, ‘The Lord will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings, you will find refuge.’ Peace settled over me like a soft blanket and my heart rate slowed. After the storm had passed over, I left my closet and found my house shrouded in darkness.
Connecting with You! 