MONDAY 2 NOVEMBER
Ruth 3.1-5; 4.13-17
Selecting the right partner

In this beautiful love story we see how Naomi’s daughter-in-law, Ruth, becomes the wife of Boaz. It was the custom in those days for a brother or near relative to marry a widow. Boaz was a close relative and Naomi encouraged Ruth to glean on his fields and to make herself known to him and woo him. This she did very successfully and she was soon married to him and gave him a son, Obed, who was the grandfather of David.

What can we learn from this story? I believe we can see the tremendous importance of all our family relationships. We see how close Ruth was to her mother-in-law. One of the advantages of staying close to the Lord is that He gives us the power to love and stops us from having in-law problems. Naomi was responsible for leading Ruth to Boaz. The person we marry is very important. It’s important that parents give their approval to those their children intend to marry. It’s very easy for young people to fall in love with the wrong sorts of people and be blinded by this love. Being in love with someone does not necessarily mean that person is the right one to marry. When the ‘in love’ feeling wears off, the person you marry must be your friend, like the things you like and be compatible with you. It’s important that you marry a Christian. Then you will be happy. Young people, listen to the advice of your parents. In India, marriages are nearly all arranged. There is much less divorce in that country.

PRAYER: Father, we pray for young people contemplating marrying that they may choose suitable partners and always be ready to listen to the advice of parents and friends. Father, give us a strong love for all members of our family, through Jesus our love giver. Amen.

TUESDAY 3 NOVEMBER
Psalm 146
I will praise the Lord all my life

It’s so wonderful to be a Christian. We are truly the happiest people on all the earth. We are so happy because we know that our relationship with God has made such a tremendous difference to our lives. Because of this we want to go on and on praising Him. We want to praise Him all day long, every day. We are so grateful to Him! As long as we live we will praise Him. We are so happy because instead of putting our trust in our political leaders or other people, we place all our trust in God. Mortal man cannot save, only God can. The God who created the whole universe is always ready to come to the aid of those who put their trust in Him. The Lord is so exceptionally good. He remains faithful for ever. Praise His wonderful Name.

Here are some of the things the Lord promises to do:

• He upholds the cause of those who are oppressed. When they cry out to Him, He hears them and helps them.The Lord gives food to the hungry who cry out to Him. There are hundreds of testimonies, including my very own, of people who have lived by faith, prayed for food and seen it turn up in miraculous ways.
• The Lord sets prisoners free, especially people who are prisoners of their own selfishness and sin and greed. He sets people free from addiction to drugs, tobacco and alcohol. He is so good.
• God also gives sight to the blind. He heals physical blindness, but much more He heals spiritual blindness, enabling people to see the truth and come to faith in Him.
• He hates to see people bowed down with depression and rescues them out of their worries and fears. He looks after widows and orphans and refugees and all who are lonely. The ones He helps are those who have been born again into a living relationship with Him. Their sins have been forgiven and they have learnt how to pray and how to trust the Lord for all their needs.

PRAYER: Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to Him as long as I live. What a wonderful God who first saves us and then teaches us to rely on Him for everything, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 4 NOVEMBER
Hebrews 9.23-28
Jesus did away with sin

After Jesus died and rose again, He went back to Heaven. All His work was completed. In Heaven He doesn’t have to offer Himself as a sacrifice again and again to deal with our sins. Jesus appeared once only - at the end of the age, the end of the old covenant in which continual offering of many sacrifices was necessary to take away sins. When He ushered in the new covenant, He made the one sacrifice of Himself on the cross and this completely and utterly got rid of all our sins. When Jesus bore the whole weight of all our sins on the cross, He completely paid for them and forgave us for them. He set us free from sin then and there, when He died for us! Isn’t that absolutely and utterly fantastic! The removal of our sins is a finished work.

Normally, we die and then face judgement. When we die ‘in Christ’, having accepted by faith that He has removed all our sins, we can be sure that we will escape judgement. Jesus will appear a second time and then all of us born-again people will be spotted by Him. We will bypass the judgement. He will take us into eternal salvation. We will be in Heaven with Him for ever. It’s important for everyone to accept the salvation He won for us on the cross and to believe all our sins were done away with when He died to pay the price for us. If we do, we will be ready to enter Heaven when we die.

PRAYER: Jesus, thank you that once for all you died to take away all our sins and pay the price for us. Help us to believe this and accept your salvation by faith, so we will be ready for heaven when we die. Help us to lead others to accept your offer of salvation so they will be with us all. Amen.

THURSDAY 5 NOVEMBER
We have been made holy

Christianity is very unique amongst all the other religions of the world. In the other religions, including Judaism, we see men trying to get to God and make themselves acceptable to God through all sorts of religious activities. In Old Testament Judaism we see a huge, complicated sacrificial system and a whole set of rules and laws to be kept. None of these religions are effective. They all fail. They fail because they are trying to do the impossible. It’s absolutely and utterly impossible for men to save themselves or make themselves acceptable to God. As the Word of God in Hebrews says to us today, “It’s impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins”.

God sent His Son into the world to completely do away with the old sacrifices. God desires them no more and is no longer pleased with them. In their place God prepared a body to be sacrificed once and for all on the cross. It was God’s will that Jesus, His Son, who was fully God and fully man, was to make us acceptable to God. When Jesus died on the cross, He did what no-one on Earth can do. He made us holy. Yes, you and I, ordinary people, have been made holy. Isn’t that fantastic? Everything in us that stops us from getting to Heaven was done away with - all our sins, all our doubts, all our fears. All we have to do is to believe. When we put all our faith and trust in the fact that Jesus has made us holy, then we begin to experience this holiness growing in our lives. Every day we live by faith, believing we have been made holy by Jesus’ death on the cross and every day we see ourselves becoming more like Jesus. He changes us and makes us fit for Heaven. Allelujah!

PRAYER: Father, you saw us, the human race, trying to save ourselves without any success. Thank you for sending us Jesus who died on the cross to save us and make us holy and totally acceptable to you, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

FRIDAY 6 NOVEMBER
1 Kings 17.7-16
When God speaks, miracles happen

When we get very close to the Lord, especially by accepting the fact that Jesus has made us holy, the Lord speaks to us. When He speaks, He gives us so much faith. He gives us faith to do the impossible, faith for miracles to take place in our lives.

Elijah was very close to God. At the end of a very severe drought, he had no food. God spoke to him and said, “I have commanded a widow to supply you with food”. Elijah immediately believed God’s word to him and went to Zarephath and found a widow collecting sticks. She was about to cook her last meal as she only had a tiny bit of food left. Then she was going to lie down and die. God spoke again and told Elijah that if she gave him a portion of the food she made, the flour and the oil wouldn’t run out until the drought was over! The woman believed God had spoken. She had the faith to give Elijah some of the food and as God said, it never ran out until the rains came.

As many of you know, this happened to Wendy and me in Emerald. God spoke to me, and a week later to Wendy, and told us both to live without a salary. We obeyed His command, and in a fantastic way we experienced miraculous provision of food over a seven month period. Every day we prayed, “Give us this day our daily bread”, and it came every day. Often we had no money, but we never ever went hungry.

Listen to God. Maybe He will tell you to give supernaturally, that is, to give more than you can afford. If He tells you to and you do, He will certainly supply you with miraculous provision to see you don’t starve. God is so good and He is the same today as He was in Elijah’s day.

PRAYER: Speak Lord, your servants are listening. Speak to us about giving and sharing when we can’t afford to give or share. Give us the faith that you will always provide and make us rich enough to be generous on every occasion, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SATURDAY 7 NOVEMBER
Mark 12.38-44
All that she had to live on
The widow’s mite

It’s not the amount you give but the sacrifice incurred in your giving that makes your gift very pleasing to God. When Jesus went into the temple, He observed a lot of people putting money into the collection box. He saw rich people flashing $100 notes (or their equivalent). They thought how good they were to put in so much. They made sure everyone could see how much they gave. Then Jesus saw a poor old lady, a widow, sneak in and put in a few dollars. Jesus astonished everyone when He said that this measly offering was worth more to God than all the $100 bills! She had put in all that she had to live on. She gave her whole pension. Sometimes people only put in a few dollars. They excuse themselves and say, “I’m putting in the widow’s mite”. They are being deceived. The widow in our story gave 100% of her money. We can’t say we give the widow’s mite unless we give 100%. That’s challenging, isn’t it?

Jenny was a single-parent mum with three young children. All the money she had to live on came from social security. One day the Lord spoke to Jenny and called her to give the widow’s mite - to give 100%. She placed all her money from the government in her church offering envelope. Soon after that God provided miraculously for her. A gift came her way, a cheque for the equivalent of her pension. Then a week later, a letter came from Social Security telling her they had made a mistake in calculating her entitlements. They hadn’t been giving her enough. Shortly after a huge cheque came which was back pay. Praise God! He always keeps His promise.

If you take a leap of faith into real sacrificial giving, you will never regret it. You will experience first hand how wonderfully generous God is. You will be so blessed.

PRAYER: Jesus, when you gave your life for us you taught us what sacrificial giving is all about. Help us to give sacrificially. Help us to give until it hurts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SUNDAY 8 NOVEMBER
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE

Today is Armistice Day when we remember the signing of the treaty that ended the First World War. It has been taken as the day we remember all who have payed the extreme sacrifice in giving up their lived in defence of their country. It is known as Remembrance Sunday.

Every Sunday we quote the most quoted verse in the bible: “God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16) This verse sums up the enormous generosity of God. “Jesus did away with sin by sacrificing himself” (Hebrews 9:26) “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many”(Hebrews 9:28) God is so very generous with His free gift of eternal life. Through Jesus He is always ready to give salvation to those who put all their Faith and Trust in Him, He has payed the price for us that’s why he is always ready to receive us.

Once we receive Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Saviour (When He receives us we receive Him) He fills us with Love and makes us very generous. He makes us generous by being generous to us! Remember the old saying: “The love in your heart was not put there to stay; love is not love til you give it away”

It is only when you are generous with your love that you experience the generosity of God to its fullest extent. The more you show your love towards God and towards others the more you will experience God’s love. We show our love to God by giving him time, time to listen to Him as we read the Bible, time to worship him when we pray and come to church. We also show our loved to others by giving them time. Time to be with them and time to listen to them. One of the best ways we can show our love to God and to each other is through our generous giving. Today’s gospel tells us that we can still be generous when we are poor and the Old Testament reading shows How God provided miraculously for a poor widow when she was willing to share her last meal with the prophet Elijah! One of the greatest discoveries of my life has been experiencing the enormous generosity of God after he has challenged me to give sacrificially far more than I can afford.

Jesus said “Give and it will be given unto you.” God has kept this promise for me so many time that I could NEVER doubt Him.

Jenny, a single mum with three young children was moved by God to give the widow’s mite: all her social security payments for one week! The next day she received a gift of the same amount of money and a week later the social security sent her a large cheque because they had made a mistake with her payments and were giving her back payments.

Let’s all rejoice in our wonderful generous God. Let’s be daring enough to give till we experience the fullness of His generosity!!!!!!

PRAYER: Generous Father God, we have seen how Jesus commended the poor widow when she gave all that she had to live on. We have also seen how you provided for another poor widow when she shared her last meal with Elijah! Inspire us all to give sacrificially so that we can experience how generous you really are. Give us the faith to believe that you keep your promise to give to us when we give to You and to each other. Through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour who gave His whole life to give us eternal life and now lives with you and the Holy Spirit one God now and for ever. Amen.