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“…But we have the mind of Christ,” (1Corinthians 2:16 NKJV). Is not the rebuke from the Lord of greater value than the praise of men? What benefits the soul more — correction or empty praises? Of this, the soul must choose. Some will follow their carnal desires that will have a great impact on their choice, but those who seek the mind of Christ find folly in fleshly things. Paul puts the concept in such a beautiful way; For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? (1 Corinthians 2:11a NKJV)? Yes, true. His thoughts and intentions are revealed only through his behavior or words spoken through his tongue. Paul continues to explain the mind of Christ is understood through His Spirit. Wow! Isn’t that simply amazing? Now the analysis stands – so what do we learn from this? Following the mind of Christ brings humility, discernment, peace beyond measure, and great testimonies! This Spirit is given free to those who seek Him. We have the freedom to access it through faith in Christ. This is where the battlefield begins as the carnal mind is overcome by the mind of Christ. The greatest fear of the carnal mind is judgment. It keeps a person from living in the freedom that comes through the Spirit. The flesh is born with a sense of judgment which grows stronger and deeper as long as it lives in the world. Freedom in the Spirit is seldom understood by fleshly wisdom because freedom is not relatable to chained minds. It leads to confusion for the carnal mind too weak to comprehend the dealings of the Spirit. Stay connected to the Spirit through the Word and with other believers, for the Lord is always ready to lift you up. “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth,” (Colossians 3:2 NKJV). Striving against the Spirit is produced with a fleshly mind and not with a Spiritual mind. As the Word says – “…The battle is not yours, but God’s,” (2 Chronicles 20:15 NKJV). Amen. by Deepika Emmanuel Sagar
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Love not law2/9/2022 “For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” Philemon 8-9 (NRSV). Paul encourages Philemon to consider his actions, basing them on love rather than law. Through Paul’s letter to Philemon, God calls us to make an intentional, disciplined decision to serve one another in love. Love, not duty, is the foundation of Christian community. Duty reeks of force, compulsion and people-pleasing. It bolsters our pride; inflates our ego. However, love does not. Rather, it mirrors Christ’s humility, selflessness and empathy. Love alone reflects the nature of God. It calls for sacrifice of self interest in favour of unity with each other. Every Christian is to respond to the call to love, building up Christian community. Broken relationships in the Body of Christ are heart-wrenching, causing unnecessary injury and division. What will it take for us to lay down our defences and welcome each other into our hearts again? Perhaps if we could see each person as Jesus Himself, then we could not help but love with sincerity and truth. Consider Jesus’ provoking words in John 13:34, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” Let’s put into action a loving spirit of reconciliation that shines as a beacon of hope for others. Together we must seek healing by building up the Church through love. Striving for Christian maturity, let us put aside our offenses, our pride and our pain and may the grace of our Lord Jesus be upon us so we can love well in His name. by Jennifer Woodley
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“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25. The words that Jesus Christ speaks to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew made so much sense to twenty-one-year-old Albert Schweitzer, that bright summer morning of 1896! He felt as though they were addressed to him! He had barely got out of bed when the thought that had been stirring his being since childhood ― a profound compassion for every living creature ― crystallised into a decision that was to shape the course of his life: up to the age of thirty, he would carry on his established career as a theologian, but after that he would devote himself body and soul to the direct service of mankind. He had no idea how, so he put his trust on Chance, or rather, Providence, to come up with a sign. “One can save one’s life along with one’s professional existence if one seizes every opportunity, however unassuming, to act humanly toward those in need. In this way we serve both the spiritual and the good” Schweitzer was to write in his autobiography, Out of my Life and Thought. The sign appeared on his desk in 1904, one year before his thirtieth birthday: a magazine of the Paris Missionary Society. As he leafed through it, an article on “The needs of the Congo Mission” caught his attention. In it the society’s president asked for people to carry on its work in Gabon, the northern province of the Congo. Men and women who respond to the Lord’s call are the people the Church needs, the article concluded. The reader’s reaction was as spontaneous and decisive as that of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. “I put the magazine aside and went quietly back to my work. My quest was over”. A year later, on October 13, 1905, while in Paris, he posted letters to his parents and friends announcing the decision to become a doctor in Equatorial Africa, and in the same letterbox dropped his resignation as principal of the theological seminary in Strasbourg. The news shook all those who knew him. Some doubted his sanity, others said that he ought to leave work among Africans to people not endowed with such talent in the arts and letters, for he was already an accomplished organist as well as an authority on Johann Sebastian Bach. His teacher, the celebrated organist Charles-Marie Widor, who promoted Schweitzer’s talent, scolded him for acting like a general who wants to fight in the front line. A lady friend told him that he could do more by lecturing on behalf of Africa rather than going there, adding that propaganda is the mother of events. But the theologian-turned-humanist was adamant in his resolution. “Only he who gives himself with a full sense of service has the right to choose an exceptional task. Only he who thinks not of heroism but of a duty undertaken with sober enthusiasm, is capable of becoming the spiritual pioneer the world needs. There are no heroes of action — only heroes of renunciation”. And so, the “narrow gate” lay open to Doctor of Medicine Albert Schweitzer. The Paris Missionary Society agreed to send him to Lambaréné, a mission station on the river Ogowe, on condition that he finance himself the undertaking. “I began a round of soliciting visits. Most of my friends and acquaintances offered help for my adventurous plan. That the German professors at the University of Strasbourg gave so liberally to an enterprise destined for a French colony moved me deeply”. He raised funds by giving organ concerts, along with the sales from his monograph on Bach, which appeared in German, French, and English. “In this way the old Thomas Cantor of Leipzig, Johann Sebastian, helped me in the provision of a hospital for negroes in the virgin forest”. Towards the end of his medical studies, Schweitzer specialised in tropical medicine in Paris. He was truly looking forward to his new vocation. “I wanted to be a doctor so that I might be able to work without having to talk. For years I had been giving myself in words and followed the calling of theological teacher and preacher with joy. This new form of activity would consist not in preaching the religion of love, but in practicing it”. In February 1913, seventy crates of medical supplies were shipped to the Congo. A month later Schweitzer and his wife, a qualified nurse, embarked on the Europe at Bordeaux and a couple of weeks later reached the East African coast. Sighting these lands brought gloomy images in Schweitzer’s mind. “From Conakry onwards we were almost always within sight of the coast. The Pepper Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast! If only that line of forest on the horizon could tell us the cruelty it had to witness!” As soon as the doctor set foot on African soil, he was surrounded by sick people brought by relatives in boats along the Ogowe; natives suffering from malaria, leprosy, sleeping sickness, dysentery, urinary infections, hernia, and elephantiasis tumours. “During the first weeks I realized that physical misery among the Africans was much greater than I expected. How glad I was to have carried on with my plan of coming here as a doctor!” In the first nine months he had examined close to two thousand patients. The natives surrendered to him in blind faith on the operating table. He was very moved by their boundless trust. In his own words (from his book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest): “How can I describe my feelings when a poor fellow is brought to me in pain? I am the only person within hundreds of miles who can help him. I may not save his life, but I can save him from days of torturing pain ― this is my great privilege. So, when the poor, moaning creature comes, I lay my hand on his forehead and say: "Don't be afraid! Soon you’ll be put to sleep, and when you wake up you won't feel pain." My wife administers the anaesthetic and when the operation is over, I watch him cry as soon as he regains consciousness: "I feel no pain! I feel no pain!” holding my hand and not letting go. It is the Lord Jesus who said to the doctor and his wife to come to the Ogowe, I tell my patient and those around him, adding that white people in Europe pay for us to live here and cure the sick. They ask me who these people are and how they know that the natives suffer. And as the African sun is shining through the coffee bushes into the shed, we, black and white, sit together and experience the words in Matthew: "And all ye are brethren". If my friends in Europe could share this!” It was in the heart of the African jungle that Schweitzer had an epiphany on fundamental questions that had been occupying him since his student days; questions that the brutality of the First World War had brought to the fore, such as Civilisation and what it truly means; questions that years of study in philosophy failed to answer. The revelation took place in September 1915, as he was sailing upstream the Ogowe on a visit to a missionary’s ailing wife ― it flashed in his mind like a light from Above: “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben! Reverence for Life!” A profoundly humane concept that was to win him many years later the Nobel Prize. What Schweitzer means by Reverence for Life is the creative drive that guides the sentient human being every moment of his life: “I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live” ― the impassioned desire to protect, defend and perpetuate all life around him. “Man experiences his existence as something unfathomably mysterious. Reverence for life is the spiritual act by which he ceases to live thoughtlessly and devotes himself in order to affirm and exalt the will to live”. Being a theologian, Schweitzer was convinced that civilization is founded on the ethical. He saw progress as the oecumenical will that upholds the ethical as the highest value. “Man is ethical only when life as such is sacred to him — the life of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowmen — and when he devotes himself to all life that needs help. The ethic of Reverence for Life encompasses everything that can be described as love, devotion, compassion in suffering, and sharing in joy and in effort”. REVERENCE FOR LIFE ― a motto that serves as ground for pacifist action, humanitarian initiative, and the abolition of cruelty to any living creature. In my view Reverence for Life is more than an ethic; it is a concept that sustains our world, from the macrocosm of ecosystems to the microcosm of the individual and the potential he harbours to do Good. by Costas Nisiotis
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Jesus sees2/8/2022 ‘Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” Luke 7:44 (NRSV) As Jesus sat eating with Simon the Pharisee, a woman came and washed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. She then kissed His feet and poured perfume over them. Jesus turned to Simon and asked, “Do you see this woman?” Simon saw an intruder in his home, disturbing his hospitality with Jesus. He saw that Jesus had soiled himself by touching and being touched by someone who was morally and spiritually filthy. And he felt repulsion by her overly affectionate actions towards his guest. Yet Jesus saw something very different. Jesus saw beyond the woman’s appearance to her heart. He saw a person weeping with gratitude and relief because she had been forgiven. He saw a woman loving Him as much as she could by pouring out her best for Him. And He saw a child of God, saved by her faith and set free to go in peace. What beauty is in this moving scene! What intimacy is shared between our Lord and His daughter! What hope is offered in these verses for each of us whom Jesus sees. Truly Christ waits and longs to forgive our many sins; to love us much. Do we seek true intimacy and peace with God? Let us turn to Him, the One who sees, and bring our broken, sinful self to Him, pouring out our confession in humility and gratitude. We may have much to confess, but His mercy is boundless towards those who come to Him. Together let us bask in the delight of His forgiveness, for nothing is hidden from Him. by Jennifer Woodley
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Not for sale2/8/2022 Many years ago, I had a friend who was filled with regret and remorse over a single decision in her life that changed her forever. In spite of it all, my friend gradually came to terms with this decision and its consequences and found peace and forgiveness in Christ. But it was a struggle and didn’t happen overnight. Before she got to this place in life, she’d gone to the front for prayer at her church repeatedly to receive Christ after the sermon. Although she was expressing a need for forgiveness, it was apparent that her public expression was becoming obsessive and revealed something was terribly wrong. Instead of faith, self-recrimination would return and she was back to square one. She longed to receive Christ, but she didn’t seem to believe He would receive her! Calling attention to her lack of faith was not solving her problem because the problem was, she was unable to forgive herself. Until she accepted, once and for all by faith she was forgiven by Christ on the cross, it didn’t seem to matter how many times she prayed to receive Him. For “without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, (Hebrews 11:6 KJV). The fact is, God wasn’t interested in making her a public example of how not to believe, He wanted her to put her doubts to rest once for all and simply believe the gospel. In the same way, we should never keep climbing the auction block of fear and unbelief. Many sad souls are bought and sold there. In the case of my friend, someone near and dear finally stepped in to help her see the light. What he was really saying was “I love you. The Lord loves you. You are blood-bought and you are forgiven. Stop getting on the auction block. You are not for sale anymore.” by Toni Babcock
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Operating as one2/6/2022 “Without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he that cometh unto God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,” (Hebrews 11:6 KJV). Repentance and faith operate from one principle. A principle Jesus spelled out when he taught his disciples “Without me, ye can do nothing,” (John 15:5b KJV). The Holy Spirit exposes any confidence we might have in the flesh and turns the heart toward the cross of Christ alone. He reveals the truth we ‘were risen with Christ’ and therefore freed by Christ to trust Him immediately. The devil attempts to steal the confidence we have in Christ and says Jesus is not enough. Satan stalls our faith and points us back to our sin and failure trying to convince us we need something more than the work of Christ to save our souls. Satan’s goal is to rob Jesus and deceive His people. “The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” (John 10:10 KJV). Any gospel that robs Christ, usurps his authority, twists the truth, and brings people into bondage is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament God promised to give his people a heart that would be willing to do what is right, and do it in faith. Prophetically, God promised in the Old Testament, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them,” (Ezekiel 36:26-27 KJV). This is repentance and faith operating as one. by Toni Babcock
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The righteous life2/2/2022 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’ Matthew 5:6 (NRSV) Within God’s people, there is a deep longing to be filled with what is pleasing and right before God. Every corner of our lives is to be swept clean of what dishonours and displeases our Heavenly Father. And in its place is an eagerness to fill our everyday lives with what is good, pure, lovely and holy. We are not satisfied with anything less, we will not accept anything else. The unrighteousness that the world blindly entertains has no appeal to us, no hold upon us. And so as Jesus says, when we seek His righteousness, it shall be found and we shall be full. Satisfied without want, we shall lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10). Our lives will reflect God’s glory as we seek righteous living. We will shine bright with His blessing, drawing others to Christ. Are we hungry and thirsty for more of Christ? Righteousness is found in the Righteous One. Seek Jesus first and we shall know the joy of living the righteous life; the delight of standing blameless and unashamed before our God and the freedom of living clean in a godless society. Be encouraged by Hosea’s exhortation today: ‘Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.’ (Hosea 10:12) by Jennifer Woodley
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Consider Jesus2/1/2022 "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus" (Heb 3:1 AV). 'Consider Yourself' is the title of a song from Lionel Bart’s famous West End musical, based on Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist. The song, which captures the moment when Oliver is accepted into Fagin’s young band of thieves, concludes with the following lines: Consider yourself our mate. We don't want to have no fuss, For after some consideration, we can state... Consider yourself One of us! Shortly before one of the leading Pharisees, a man named Nicodemus, paid an unexpected visit to Jesus, under cover of darkness, the crowds had been drawn to this new miracle worker and his teaching concerning the Kingdom of God and wanted there and then to identify themselves with him (John 2:23). Jesus had refused that invitation (24) and now it was the turn of some in the religious establishment to seek to control Jesus by adopting him into their own teaching fraternity. “We know…” Nicodemus attempted to explain to Jesus, “that you are a prophet sent from God…” referring to the acknowledgement by some leading Pharisees of the miracles that were fast becoming a hallmark of Jesus’ ministry. The Pharisees regarded themselves as the ones ‘in the know’ as far as religious matters were concerned, and the Pharisee, Nicodemus appears to want to grant a Pharisaic ‘seal of approval’ on the new Rabbi from Nazareth, effectively making him one of their own. “Consider us” they might have said, “and join our company.” But Jesus’ reply took Nicodemus completely by surprise. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God, Jesus revealed, was unfolding there and then (Luke 17:21) but, without experience of the new birth, it was impossible even for these religious leaders either to see it or to enter into it. As Jesus demonstrated to Nicodemus, the new birth is a work of the Spirit, not of the flesh and the spirit, just like the wind that blows around us, it is beyond our control, though we hear its sound (or voice) and can only respond to it. We can’t control it (John 3:8). Just like the crowds who had gathered to hear him, we want to take hold of Jesus and make him our own (John 2:23). We look at ourselves and consider that we want to be more like him and so we strive to re-fashion ourselves in his image. This all seems very good, but the focus is often more on the self and less on Jesus who must not only the object but also the author and finisher of our faith (Heb 12:2). Instead, our confidence needs to be, as T.F. Torrance has said, “in Christ’s grasp of us rather than in our grasp of him.” It is Jesus who has chosen us not we who have chosen him (John 15:16) and we can be confident that, having taken us to himself, he will hold us firmly and securely (10:28). The new birth that Jesus calls us to is a sharing in the new life that he has affected for us through his own life, death and resurrection. Jesus is the new birth. He is the new man or the ‘second man’ as Paul calls him (1 Cor 15:47) and we can only discover our true identity as we forget ourselves and consider him, resting in his grace. Only when we consider Jesus as the very substance of our being do we experience our true self, expressed through a perfect life (his), in full communion with God our heavenly Father. As Paul stated in his letter to the churches in Galatia: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). by Richard Dempsey
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Be reconcilers1/12/2022 We tend to live in a way that exposes what we truly believe about ourselves. That woman whose personal worth was shattered through years of physical and verbal abuse will find it hard to believe she deserves anything better. That man who believes he is beyond redemption will most likely remain there unless a fundamental change in his thinking takes place. “For as he thinks within himself, so he is…” the proverb goes. Happily, this is where a reconciler can step in. The Apostle Paul wrote “From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way,” (2 Corinthians 5:16 CSB). Here we catch a hint of how to help change someone’s self-belief. Like Paul, we can set the example, choosing to know them as they could be (if only they believed in Christ) not as who they are in the flesh at any given moment. Viewing people in this light, we can show it is often what people believe about themselves that is the biggest obstacle to faith. Become a reconciler instead of a ‘list-keeper’ of iniquities; an advocate instead of prosecutor or judge. Learn to think like Paul who wrote, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we in him might become the righteousness of God,” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21 CSB). by Toni Babcock
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Nicodemus1/11/2022 The words that once had guarded faith and fastened up life’s promise and the future hope in a written code, seemed now as frazzled stitches of a tired old wineskin, unfit to receive and hold, with confidence, the newer outpourings of the Spirit. How much of truth remains in this treasury of words with which we Pharisees, age-old custodians of the law, engage in false exchanges? Could it be that a truer Word, more sacred and more glorious, while enlightening the old, has come to us, being spoken now, in our own day, with a power and authority diverse and foreign to its Galilean tongue? I move quickly, while the darkness shields me under night’s seclusion and from the day’s aberration, to enter into the presence of that Light which is ‘the light of all mankind’. He spoke to me of the wind that combs the crowded rows of springtime barley and greets the flowers which grace the summer meadow; that shakes and scatters and rakes the autumn leaves and howls through the trees that haunt dead winter’s wastes; that ruffles the reverent robes the proud Pharisee wears, ‘to be seen of men’ - but no man sees the wind. I marvelled how a man can be reborn, as a child of light from this dark world concealed. Yet, baring in the world the Spirit’s works, the renewed so walk, that the reign of God advances with each step. For so great was the Father’s care for this wayward world, that he sent forth the Son of his love, who assumed and healed our fallenness, that all who have faith in him may be reborn and cross from death unto life everlasting. by Richard Dempsey
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2/10/2022
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