MONDAY 23 FEBRUARY
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-19
Supernatural Foundations

We as Christians (and Jews) believe in God because He has revealed Himself to us. When God speaks He often confirms what He has said with a supernatural happening. The Jewish race began with Abram. God spoke to him and promised him he would have many descendants. The first of these would be born to his wife Sarai. For this to happen there would have to be a miracle. Abram was 99 and Sarai was 90. When Abram heard God say Sarai would have a son, he thought God was joking. (Imagine an elderly couple in an old people’s home announcing they were having a baby.) He burst into laughter. When Abram believed God’s promise God changed his name and wife’s name. His name was changed from Abram which means “exalted father” to Abraham which means “ancestor of many people”. His wife’s name was changed from Sarai which means “head person” to Sarah or “princess”. These name changes remind us of the big change that takes place when people really believe God and put their faith and trust in Him.

When we put our faith and trust in the Good News that Jesus died and rose again, to give us eternal life, a huge miracle takes place. We are born again. We are made into new people. Originally when non-Christians were baptized they were given a new name. This is the origin of the term “Christian name”.

PRAYER: Father God, thank you for proving that what you say is right by performing great miracles. Help all of us who are baptized Christians believe that you have performed a great miracle by causing us to be born again into new people who will never die, through Jesus our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

TUESDAY 24 FEBRUARY
Psalm 22:23-32
Let All the Families on the Earth Worship Him

Psalm 22 is a wonderful prophecy of Jesus on the cross. As the miracle of Isaac’s birth began the Jewish nation, so the miracle of Jesus dying to take all sin away and rising again to give new life, gave birth to the Christian church, which God planned to spread to all the nations of the world. As we think of the fantastic accomplishment of Jesus’ sacrificial death that all would be able to receive eternal life and be with the Lord into all eternity, we can’t help but burst into singing songs of praise and thanksgiving: “To God be the glory, great things he has done, so loved He the world that He gave us His Son, Who yielded His life an atonement for sin, and opened the life gate that all may go in”.

After Jesus paid the price for all of us He pleads with the Father to let us all into Heaven. God hears His prayer and answers it so all who seek the Lord find Him and the eternal life He offers them. In the last two millennia this fantastic Good News has reached every nation in the world and many have responded and accepted Jesus as Lord, and so as His dominion spreads Jesus is in charge. He rules over all the nations in His subtle way. Because He rules by love, He does not force Himself onto anyone. The power of His love draws many, many people into his Kingdom.

PRAYER: Father, we pray your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. You accepted the price Jesus paid for all people when He died on the cross. Draw people from all nations (especially Australia) into your kingdom. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY
Romans 4:13-25
The Faith of Abraham

Abraham became the Father of many people because of His amazing faith. He had faith that God could do the impossible. He had one foot in the grave and his 90 year old wife’s womb was dead. Yet he believed that she could give birth to a baby. Abraham had such a strong faith because he believed that God would keep His promise. God told him that through Sarah he would be the father of many nations. Abraham believed God! Abraham’s faith was “credited to Him as righteousness”. That means he was established in a right relationship with God. His trust in God caused all his sins to be forgiven and he was made good enough to become God’s personal friend forever.

We are all called and encouraged to have the same faith Abraham had. If we do we are his offspring. We can say, “he is father of us all,” even though we are not Jews. As Sunday School children often sing, “Father Abraham had many sons – you are one of them and so am I,’ we become Abraham’s faith children when we, too, believe that God will keep His promises. He has promised us all that Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins. He was raised from the dead to put us all into a right relationship with God. Jesus has the power to do the impossible; to turn sinners into saints. As we trust in Jesus ‘power to transform us and have us born again into new people, we become God’s children. We know without a doubt that heaven is our destination. The Bible says so clearly, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life“ (John 3:16).

PRAYER: Father, give us all the same faith Abraham had; faith to believe the impossible to convert a sinner like me into one of Your saints. Thank you that as I believe your promises I can be absolutely sure that my sins are forgiven, and that I am in a right relationship with You and will be with You forever. Amen.

THURSDAY 26 MARCH
Galatians 1:11-24
The Good News is Fair Dinkum

We saw yesterday that God is in the business of changing sinners into saints. The best example of this is what He did with St Paul. Saul of Tarsus was an enemy of the Church of Jesus Christ. His mission was to persecute it and to destroy it. Jesus had other plans for Saul’s life. God had planned for him to be a powerful Missionary to build up the Church – not to destroy it. When Saul was searching out more Christians to destroy, God put His plan into action with a flashing light that threw Saul right off his horse. Jesus was revealed to Him. Jesus gave him the good news and was giving Saul the task of taking this good news to the gentile world – to all non-Jews. Saul became a true, faithful son of Abraham. His encounter with Jesus caused that great miracle to take place. Saul was born again; a sinner became a saint, an enemy became a friend! Saul of Tarsus, the murderer, became Paul the greatest missionary the church has ever seen! Paul went to great lengths to show that the good news he was preaching came directly, by revelation, from Jesus. He hardly saw the other apostles, yet He had so much good news to tell. He preached what Jesus had shown him.

Christianity is unique among all other religions. It’s about God revealing Himself to us. In many different ways God reveals Himself to us today. We can say very confidently with St Paul, “I know whom I believed” (2Timothy 1:12). What we preach is absolutely fair dinkum. It’s not something man has made up. We know the message is true because we see God keeping His promises and doing the impossible. The miracles we experience prove the Gospel is authentic.

PRAYER: Lord God, we thank you for revealing the wonderful good news of salvation to St Paul and to all of us who trust in you. Thank you for making us certain by the many miracles that have accompanied the preaching of your word down through the ages. Empower us with your Holy Spirit to share this good news with lots of people, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

FRIDAY 27 FEBRUARY
Mark 14:27-52
Not What I Want but What You Want

Every Friday in Lent we are reading through Mark’s account of the Passion of Jesus – all the suffering He went through to pay the price for our sins and enable us to become God’s children and enjoy eternal life with Him. Jesus knew that this was one task He would have to do all by Himself. He knew that even Peter and the other disciples would deny Him or fall away from Him. The thought of taking all our sins into His heart and paying the price for them by enduring the agony of the cross seemed too much for Jesus to bear. As He fell to His knees at Gethsemane His first prayer was to be spared all this suffering. Then He realized the very purpose for His coming to earth was to pay for our sins and enable us to get to heaven. His prayer soon changed to, “Not what I want but what You want”. When Jesus needed the prayer-support of His disciples, He found them sleeping. Soon He was arrested as Judas led His captors to Him. The disciples tried in their own strength to defend Him but God’s will had to be done. Jesus had to go through His trials and die for us all.

Jesus calls us to follow in His footsteps and be willing to suffer in order to proclaim the Good News to an unbelieving world. Satan, described by Jesus as the Prince of this world, bends over backwards to put people against us when we witness to people and do all we can to win them for Christ, so we are tempted to take the easy way out and keep our beliefs to ourselves. We need to pray, as Jesus prayed, “not my will but yours be done”.

PRAYER: Jesus, we thank you that your love for us was so great that you went through so much agony to set us free. Help us to follow in your footsteps and be willing to deny ourselves and go through pain and agony to get your Good News across to unbelievers. Thank you Jesus. Amen.

SATURDAY 28 FEBRUARY
Mark 8:31-38
Whoever Loses His Life
Will Find It

When Peter heard that Jesus was going to suffer many things – be rejected by the Jewish leaders and be killed – he was horrified. He tried to make Jesus turn away from such suffering. Without realizing it Peter was using Satan’s tactics – that is peace at any price – peace with compromise. That’s why Jesus said “get behind me Satan”. He told Peter he was thinking like a man and not like God.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace and He wants to lead all people into His kingdom of peace, but the peace He offers is very costly. When we are born into the world we are born in rebellion to God. Our natural tendency is to be selfish. Selfish people can never live in peace with other selfish people – soon they will be squabbling. For us to find peace, that selfishness in us must be dealt with, it must be killed. To follow Jesus into His kingdom of peace we therefore have to deny ourselves and take up our own crosses. Denying self and taking up a cross is extremely painful – it’s not something any one of us wants to do. If we want to live our lives our way Jesus says we will lose them. What good is it if we gain the whole world and lose ourselves? Don’t give way to anti-Christian peer pressure (this applies especially to kids at school). Remember, Jesus said if we are ashamed of Him we will lose our lives forever! Let’s all make a conscious effort to deny ourselves. Give up selfish practices (too much TV, or sport etc) and do things for others. Give up time to set aside for prayer and worship with other Christians in the daily services of our church. Finally, always be willing to suffer those who oppose us in any way very gladly.

PRAYER: Father, it’s so hard for us to take up our crosses and deny ourselves to follow you. Help us to put You first whatever the cost and never to be ashamed to tell people we follow You. Show us what self-pleasing time you want us to give over to prayer and worship in doing good for others. Through Jesus who gave up everything for us, our wonderful Saviour. Amen.

SUNDAY 1 MARCH
THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE
DENY YOURSELF TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW JESUS.

Before we talk about the need for each of us to deny ourself lets remember that Jesus does not deny us. He thinks the world of us. He delights in us. Each one of us is very special to Him. He loved us all so much that He was willing to DENY HIMSELF for us. He laid down his life for us. Because He died we will all live! We will live for ever! Because He died Jesus makes us all this offer of eternal life. He offers it to all of us. Before we receive this offer we must realise that CONDITIONS APPLY (We see this stated after many ads on TV)

What are these conditions? We must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Him. We have to be willing to loose our life for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the Good News. If we are willing to lose our life He promises us we will find life- ETERNAL LIFE.

What does it me in practical terms to deny yourself? I believe the answer is very simple. It means putting yourself last. Give to God, to your family and others much more than you spend on yourself. Spend much more time doing things for other people than you send doing things for yourself. It means giving God time in praying , reading your bible, and worshipping Him in church.

The only way we can do this effectively is to completely surrender our lives to God. A wonderful thing happens when we do this. Jesus fills us with His Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit pours lots of love into our hearts. Love gives us a very strong desire to be more concerned for others than for ourselves.

The natural tendency in each of us is to put ourselves first. When we surrender to God and put all our faith and trust in Him , He gives us supernatural energy.

This energy enables us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and become more and more like Jesus. The Bible calls this being justified by faith.

“Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5: 1 –2)

PRAYER: Dear Lord Jesus, thank you so much that you that you loved us all so much and valued us so much that you denied yourself and let yourself be crucified to give us eternal life. As we put our faith and trust in You fill us with your Holy Spirit and pour lots of love into our lives inspiring us to deny ourselves by putting you first others second and ourselves last. Amen.