MONDAY 27 APRIL
Acts 8:26-40
It Only Takes A Few Minutes
The power released, when Jesus died on the cross, rose again and poured out His Holy Spirit, is enormous. As soon as people have their hearts open to it; their lives are transformed immediately and they are eligible to be incorporated into Jesus’ Christian Church through Baptism.
The Ethiopian Eunuch in our Bible passage today was reading the Old Testament and searching for the truth. In a miraculous way God sent Philip to him who explained the Scripture about the lamb lead to the slaughter and how it applied to Jesus. When this official from Ethiopia heard the good news of the saving, life transforming love that flowed from Jesus, He opened his heart to Him and was gloriously saved. He went on his way rejoicing – the happiest man in the world.
When I was ministering in England a girl joined our confirmation class just one week before the confirmation. She opened up her whole life to the saving power of Jesus and I had no hesitation in presenting her to the Bishop.
When Jesus prepared His Disciples to be bearers of the Good News, He gave two instructions: wait and pray. When we follow in their footsteps, and wait and pray, God will fill us with the Holy Spirit giving us all the power we need to be witnesses and He will miraculously draw to us, or draw us, to many people who like the Ethiopian will be saved and drawn into His Kingdom. It will only take a few minutes!
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, we thank You for Your saving, life transforming power. As we wait and pray, make us powerful witnesses and then bring people to us so they may open their lives to You and be quickly drawn into Your Church. Jesus, our powerful Saviour. Amen.
TUESDAY 28 APRIL
Psalm 22
All the Ends of the Earth Will Turn To the Lord
This Psalm, written hundreds of years before Jesus came to the Earth, is a wonderful prophecy of the spread of Christianity all over the world! What God proclaims to us in the Bible, which is God’s Word, is that God is the God of the whole world. Every nation and every group of people has been created by Him. He has dominion over them all. In other words God is in charge. He is the boss. Slowly, but surely, and sometimes quite quickly, God’s message of salvation through the saving power of Jesus has spread to every country in the world – just as the Psalm said it would! The Psalm ends with the words: “He has done it”. What has He done? Jesus has procured the salvation of every person ever born. On the cross He paid the price for them. He forgave them all their sins and transformed their lives. He has done all He had to do to recreate us into new people. Born again as members of His body; children of God and inheritors of eternal life.
As we tell people the Good News and lead them to believe it and repent, they open their hearts to Jesus and receive as a free gift, all He has done for them. Their lives are transformed.
Christianity is not just a major world religion in a pluralistic society. It tells us that the only way is through Jesus. This Good News is for everybody. Personal salvation by Jesus is the most wonderful thing that can happen to anybody. Jesus offers it to all people of all races and cultural and religious backgrounds. He wants His wonderful life to be experienced by everyone.
PRAYER: Father God, ruler of all the nations, thank You for sending Jesus to pay the price for everyone and procure their salvation. Empower us by Your Holy Spirit to share the wonderful Good News with as many people as we can, through the power of Jesus Christ, Lord of the whole world. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 29 April
I John 4:7-21
Power To Love
Yesterday we talked (as we often do) of Jesus saving us making us into new people. Let’s look today at what the real transformation, that takes place in us when we are born again, is. It is that we are given power to love. God is love – we are recreated to be like Him – we are given power to love in the same way that God loves us. The trouble with the English language is that he word love has many meanings. We need to filter out the real meaning of God’s love. The Greek language, the language of the New Testament, had several words for our word “love”. The word “eros” was used for all types of sexual love; fully shown in the love between husband and wife. The word “storge” meant affection – love parents have for their offspring and the love friends have for each other. Similar to it was the word “philios” – or brotherly love which also is the love friends have for each other.
When the New Testament came to be written, the love God has for us, and the power to love that God gives us when we are saved and born again, could not fit into any of the existing words for love. A new word was invented; it is “agape”. Agape is divine gift love: the love that God pours out on us; the love Jesus gave on the cross etc. C.S. Lewis in his book, “The Four Loves” says, “Divine gift love in a man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons.” Finally God enables men to have a gift love towards Himself. The best definition of this love is summed up in this poem by Onenham in the book ‘The Alter of Love’.
Love forever gives,
Forgives – out lives –
And ever stands
With open hands
And while it lives,
It gives.
For this is love’ prerogative
To give, and give and give.
PRAYER: Father, thank You for pouring out Your love for us, especially through all that Jesus gave us on the cross. Fill us all with this power to love; to give love not only to those who love us but our enemies and those we find it hard to even like, through Jesus who loves us all – even when we are crucifying Him by our unlove. Amen.
THURSDAY 30 April
John 8.31-36
True Freedom
When we talk about Jesus saving us we mean that He saves us from slavery and bondage. Most people would say, “We are not slaves, we are free!” Let’s examine the lives of all the people who do not know Jesus. We soon find that what Jesus said is true – they are slaves of sin. They are slaves because most people really do not want to sin; they just can’t help sinning. There is something in our human natures that forces us to sin. We say and do things that hurt the people we love. We get into habits that do so much harm to our own bodies. It gets worse when we start taking drugs. That’s when we really become slaves. Look at all the people addicted to nicotine. The warning label says that smoking kills, smoking harms other people, and causes heart disease and lung cancer and yet they still puff away. They can’t help it because they are slaves of nicotine. The same is true of alcohol and all the really nasty drugs. They all ruin people’s lives yet they can’t get rid of them. Whatever type of sinful habit or addiction is controlling us, there is only one way out; only one way to freedom. We need to know the truth about Jesus. Jesus is the only one who can set people free from sins and addiction. If Jesus sets us free, we are free indeed. If we know the truth, the truth will set us free.
Those who have experienced this freedom, those who have been set free from sin or addiction, can help all those who are in bondage. The Holy Spirit will empower them to be witnesses and evangelists. There is no better activity in all the world than helping others to find true freedom in Jesus.
PRAYER: Jesus, it’s so wonderful to be free. Thank you for setting us free. Empower us with your Holy Spirit to help others to realise the wonderful truth that you can set them free and make them so happy, Jesus our wonderful Saviour. Amen.
FRIDAY 1 MAY
1 John 4.1-8
The One in you is greater than the one who is in the world
We saw yesterday how Jesus sets us free from sins and addictions. This does not mean that when we accept Jesus into our lives and start trusting in Him that we are completely free from sin. We all sin and will probably continue to do so until we are all in glory with Christ – then it will be impossible to sin! Meanwhile, we must recognize that once we have opened the doors of our hearts to Jesus we have within ourselves a very strong power. If we use this power Jesus always makes available to us, we will discover that sin is no longer a problem to us. Satan can tempt us as much as he likes, but we have in us a power so much stronger than his power. We have to be sure that we do have Jesus in our hearts.
There are false spirits around which may appear to be helpful, but will destroy us in the end. To be sure that we have Jesus we have to acknowledge that He is the Divine Son of God who always existed with His Father, together with the Holy Spirit, as part of the Godhead. We also have to believe that He became man and died on the cross and rose again to set us free. We can tell whether people have Jesus in their hearts or whether they have some false spirit by whether they listen to us when we share with them the Good News of Jesus. If they don’t listen and if the vibes they give out clash with ours, we know they are on the wrong track. All we can do is pray for them and continue to love them and forgive them. Then Jesus will set them free and come into their hearts.
PRAYER: Jesus, it’s so wonderful to know that you who are in us are so much more powerful than Satan who is in the world. Encourage us to keep using this power so sin is no longer a problem to us. Help us to discern people with spirits which are not of you and help us to pray for them and love them until they acknowledge you as their Divine Lord and Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 2 MAY
John 15.1-8
We must all bear fruit
Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” The moment we are born again and saved, we are grafted onto the vine. The life of Jesus, like the sap of the grape vine, starts to flow through us. This life-giving sap causes us to bear fruit. It makes us become like Jesus and bear all the fruit Jesus bore. Galatians 5.22-23 gives us a good list of the most important fruits of the Spirit of Jesus; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Jesus said, “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7.16). The only way we can prove that we are Christians is to bear fruit. If there is no fruit or only bad fruit (see Galatians 5.10-20 for a list of bad fruit), we must be cut off from the vine.
I bought a thornless rose bush from Hawkins some years ago. I dug it out because it never flowered! My wife keeps pointing out to me that bushes she prunes a lot flower the most. To bear fruit, we have to let God prune us. Often we are scared when the sinful human nature is cut off and killed by the power of Jesus’ cross. We will find that branches of the sinful human nature will start growing again. We must constantly submit to the Divine Pruner and let Him lop them off; the more we let them grow the more it will hurt. The most important thing for us to do is to remain in Jesus. The word ‘remain’ is repeated eight times in these eight verses. We remain in Jesus by reading His Word daily, by praying continually and meeting with the body of believers at least once a week, preferably much more than that. Try to get to a daily Eucharist, or the Bible studies and prayer meetings as well as Sunday church. The more we remain in Him, the more fruit we will bear and more of our prayers will be answered.
PRAYER: Heavenly Gardener, graft me securely onto the vine. Prune me severely so I can bear much fruit and keep me remaining in the vine by sending your Holy Spirit to make the Bible come alive and help me pray. Keep me meeting with other believers, through Jesus the Life-giving Vine. Amen.
SUNDAY 6th.MAY
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
The parable of the Vine in today’s Gospel has a very important a very important message for us all. There is only one way we can live a successful victorious Christian life and that is to be continuously abiding in Jesus and by letting Jesus continuously abide in us.
If a branch is cut off from the vine the sap stops flowing into it and it soon dies so if we stay grafted into the vine of Jesus body then his life giving grace will continue to flow through us.
As a little boy was walking with his father through some fields he grabbed hold of his father’s little finger. Every time he stepped into a rut or tripped over something he lost his grip and fell over. This happened several times then he said to his daddy, ‘I think if you held my hand I wouldn’t fall” He stumbled many times after that but he never hit the ground. Now as you walk with God, don’t try to hold on to him, let Him hold on to you. You may stumble but He will never let you fall.
God has given us a way of holding on to us. It’s when we come to church and receive Jesus Body and Blood in the sacraments. It’s when we read the Bible and listen to God’s word being proclaimed. It’s when we really believe what His Word says about us. Above all it’s when we pray and put all our faith and trust in Jesus. His word gives us the faith to believe God is holding on to us when it says: “By grace you have been saved and God has raised us up with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:5,6)
Let’s all keep abiding in the vine so we can remain in Jesus and Jesus can remain in us.
PRAYER: Father thank you so much for giving us Jesus to be the Vine that we can be grafted into. Graft us all into Jesus that we may ever abide in Him and He in us. Show us how we an fully surrender so we an be sure you are always holding us and keeping us safe. Through Jesus our wonderful Vine. Amen.