TRUE WORSHIPPERS ARE SEEKERS

(May 10, 2021) Norman and Margaret Moss share this encouraging meditation…

We were meditating on John 4:23: ‘True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.’

We felt the Lord was saying: This is whom I seek… those who will –

  • Worship me in spirit and in truth
  • Sit at my feet to learn of me as Mary did (Luke 10:39)
  • Wash my feet with their tears (John 11:2)
  • Come before me as Daniel did (Daniel 10:12)
  • Cry to me in their distress as David did from his youth (I Samuel 16:7, 17:42-54)  
  • Be like Hannah pleading before me for a child and receiving much more (1 Samuel 1:10-15)
  • Like Abraham look to me for direction and follow my instructions (Genesis 15:2)
  • Like Joseph be so devoted to me that I raised him from deep distress to the highest place in the land (Genesis 41:40).

Such people are my joy and delight.

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CHANGES, CHOICES, CHALLENGES… CLINGING TO JESUS!

(May 09, 2021) Carol Round reminds us of…

If we need a reminder of the changes that have occurred in our world, we only need to study history. One can also read newspaper headlines or listen to the daily news. Nothing stays the same. If it did, there would be no news to report.

Change
A post on Facebook reminded me of how times have changed since I was born… and maybe since your birth.

The list was long, but here are a few of the mind-boggling changes mentioned:

  • Did you ever think in 1998 that three years later, you would never take pictures on film again? With today’s smart phones, who even has a camera these days? While I still do, I take more photos with my iPhone than with a camera.
  • In 2018 the first self-driving cars appeared on the road. Talk about changes.
  • Technology has invaded our world creating unimaginable changes in every area of our lives. If you’re old enough, you can recall a world before colour television, computers, microwave ovens, and computerised medicine.
  • I had my second knee replacement recently (Thanks to all who’ve been praying for me! I’m continuing in my recuperation and appreciate your prayers). Four years ago, I had the first one done. During the time span, technology has brought improvements to the procedure, and my latest surgery involved the use of a robotic device.
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THE ‘OTHERS CAN BUT YOU CAN’T’ CHALLENGE!

(May 6, 2021) Robert and Maureen McQuillan reflect…

Sunday May 23 this year is regarded by many churches as Pentecost Sunday, especially Holy Spirit-filled ones, celebrating the outpouring of God’s Spirit on those humble first disciples.

Since that Acts 2 experience the church has grown – about 2.6 billion adherents globally in early 2020. Testimonies, Christian books, even secular encyclopedic history, record demonstrations of Holy Spirit assistance, miracles, emboldened men and women anointed by him to move in the Spirit and speak forth genuine prophecy, words of knowledge and wisdom, cast out demons… and more!

Praise God for churches that have been open to the Holy Spirit… and for individuals who have been bold in allowing the Spirt to use them to brighten darkened lives. But… sadly, many churches, many bold Christians have not been regarded or respected for their service (See Erica Grace’s heart-touching April article True Fruit – From Unsung Heroes).

The reality is that it isn’t always been easy to be bold for Jesus and allow the Spirit to take one down a different road to others… yet remaining humble and down-to-earth!  Indeed, for all of us, there is the constant challenge to allow the Holy Spirit to keep us under control so that we don’t get bigheaded and move beyond our station – unless of course it’s God directed, and he gets the glory in all that’s achieved for the kingdom.

The challenge
Such recollecting reminds us that some 40 years we came across the following challenge by the late Bill Britton, entitled Others May, You Cannot)… still fresh, challenging, and meaningful, especially if you’re sold out to the ministry call of Christ on your life.

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EASTER ATTACK AFTER DRAMATIC HEALING CONVERSION

April 13, 2021, Morning Star News reports…

Sources tell of a mother of seven children in eastern Uganda suffered serious wounds and is cut off from her family after her husband and other Muslim relatives attacked her on Easter Sunday for putting her faith in Christ.

Salimati Naibira, 37, of Bukoba B village, lost consciousness after her husband cut her with a dagger known as a Somali sword in the thigh and back on April 4 as she attended a worship service for the first time in the area, she said. She had converted from Islam to Christianity three days prior to Easter.

She said she was on her way to the church service when she met her brother-in-law, Ahirafu Kowa, who asked her where she was going. He likely became suspicious after Salimati told him she was going to visit a friend, she said. One hour into the worship service, she saw through a window that her husband and other relatives were approaching.

Somali sword attack
‘I saw my husband, Ayubu Kairu, and some family members enter the church gate shouting “Allah Akbar (jihadist slogan ‘God is greater’),”’ she told MSN. The church members took off from church worship to save their lives.’

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APRIL REFLECTIONS

(April 17, 2021) Robert and Maureen McQuillan share…

This is a month of reflections and memories.

1. April Fools’ Day
This is what April 1st has been known as for several centuries in different cultures. Traditions include playing hoaxes or practical jokes on others, and then pronouncing ‘April Fool!’ at their end.

For example, managers would send clueless staff out on impossible ‘gofer’ tasks such as ‘Get me a lefthanded screwdriver’ or ‘Paintbrush that paints round corners.’ In 1998, after Burger King advertised a Left-Handed Whopper resulting in scores of clueless customers requesting this fake.

In 1976, BBC pulled off another of its many AFD pranks. Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told listeners that at 9:47 am that day, the temporary alignment of Pluto and Jupiter would cause a reduction in Earth’s gravity, allowing people to briefly levitate. At 9:48, hundreds of enthralled callers flooded the lines with reports that they had floated in the air!

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TITHING TO – GOD?

(April 16, 2021) Robert McQuillan responds to a troubled family man’s question…

Dear Dr Robert
Not naming my church, but our pastor demands we pay tithes to God, that if we don’t, we won’t be blessed. He quotes people receiving great new jobs or healings because they tithed and others receiving neither because they didn’t tithe. I feel uneasy about this… must I tithe to God? ‘Victor.’

Dear Victor

This instantly causes me to query ‘What kind of a God of free grace are we worshipping if we have to pay for his blessings?’ The truth is that we could never financially pay God for all he has done for us! Your pastor is using God’s name but referring to the church and its responsibilities.

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TITHING TO THE CHURCH

(April 16, 2021) Maureen McQuillan responds to a lady who queries giving…

Dear Pastor Maureen
Must I give offerings only to my denominational church? ‘Sarah’

Dear Sarah

As Robert points out in his question-answer this month, we should be generous in our giving… but the query that comes to my mind is ‘Are we Christians because we’re Anglican, Baptist, United, Pentecostal denomination – aren’t we simply Christians because we’ve accepted Jesus as our Saviour?’

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ENDURING CHURCH PRINCIPLES – PART 2

(April14, 2021) Dr Jim McClure, straight shooting theologian, continues his teaching on this important aspect of genuine church life…

As I mentioned last month, this past year has been a challenging time for churches throughout the world as each local church has attempted to redefine how to perform and how to survive as a church.

I’d written about two of five principles to which those first Christians – the early church – were committed… Engaging in Evangelism and Church Growth and Commitment to God’s Word and Prayer.

Here I continue with the other three…

3. Develop Authentic Relationships
Act 2:42 recalls that the early church, those first Christians ‘… devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.’

There are a further two things this verse teaches us.

(i) Fellowship
This is a word that is widely used in church circles today, but the way fellowship is expressed often falls far short of what the New Testament means by the word. Christianity is a relational thing!

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CANCER DIAGNOSED; JEWISH WOMAN REMEMBERED VISION OF JESUS

(April 13, 2021) Benjamin Lahood, studying at Lighthouse Christian Academy, Los Angeles, brings shares a miraculous testimony...

After Shiri Joshua was told she had a rare, virulent form of breast cancer (already at stage 3) she faced a stark choice one Friday afternoon. Would she start chemo or undergo a mastectomy on the following Monday?

‘I honestly didn’t even comprehend those words,’ Shiri says on a 100 Huntley Street video.

An Israel-born Jew, she moved to Toronto at 19, but her family continued to speak Hebrew at home. She always had an inquisitiveness about spiritually. Due to her upbringing, she thought she could only be either orthodox or a secular Jew.

But after she moved to Canada, she fell under the spell of the New Age movement. ‘I really did not feel that my traditional Jewish upbringing would satisfy what I wanted,’ she says. I knew there was a God, I just did not know him.

Vision of Jesus
Two years prior to her diagnosis, she had a vision of Jesus. She had heard about the Lord but felt she needed to avoid Jesus because of her Jewish background. But in her search for spirituality one day, she asked God if Jesus was real.

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TRUE FRUIT – FROM UNSUNG HEROES

Erica Grace, ex-missionary to South America, challenges us to remember unsung Hebrews 11 type heroes!

Born in Sandviken, Norway in 1878, Marie Monsen became a schoolteacher. She went to China in 1901 to help the missionary couple sent there by her Lutheran church needing a teacher for their children.

But shortly after she arrived those missionaries left due to the national unrest and turn of events in China The mission agency back in Norway didn’t have the funds to send for Marie as well, so she stayed back waiting for her ticket to arrive.

Following Bible examples
Meanwhile, people kept coming to the mission home looking for help but Marie was the only one there.  She would face squalid conditions of starving, sick children and not knowing what do, felt helpless and overwhelmed… the situations she faced each day seemed insurmountable. Marie’s only solution would be to pray.

One emergency would be followed by another, then another in a nearby town. Everywhere she went Marie (right) would just open her Bible and read especially the gospels where Jesus performed miracles. Then she would pray for people with all sorts of problems, diseases and oppressions. She hadn’t seen this being done back home in her church, but she followed the examples in the Bible.

Not quite sure where she even was, she was woken one day by pleas for help by distraught parents. When she reached their home, she saw their only son, around nine years old, lying on a mat – dead. They begged her to pray to her God.

Miracles!
With childlike faith Marie opened her Bible, read where Jesus raised a young son from the dead and prayed: ‘Lord, you are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Please raise this son from the dead.’

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