MONDAY 31ST OCTOBER
Amos 5.18-24
Let justice and righteousness flow like a never-ending stream
We come to that time of the year when we concentrate our thoughts on the second coming of Jesus and the day of judgment. On that day we will have our whole lives sifted through to see if we are acceptable to God for eternal life.
When Amos gave this prophecy about the Day of the Lord, the moral life of the Israelite community had deteriorated. Although they were still very religious, they were only thinking of themselves. They were being unjust and hard to each other, and were often at loggerheads with each other. The people thought they were pleasing God by the way they offered sacrifices to Him, and the more psalms and hymns they sang in their religious gatherings.
God really shocked them by telling them that He couldn’t stand their religious gatherings and couldn’t tolerate their songs. Surely God loved to be worshipped and adored? The reason God could not accept their worship was because it did not match with their lives.
When God comes to judge us, He will be looking for people whose lives are like rivers of love. People who surrender their lives to Jesus and let Him take over, have His love flowing out of their hearts like a river, making them kind and generous, making them just and fair, making strong relationships with all the people around. The worship of truly surrendered people is a time of infilling when the rivers of love burst their banks as God pours love into their hearts by the Holy Spirit He has given them.
PRAYER: Father, we want to be ready on the Day of the Lord, when we face judgment. We totally surrender our whole lives to you. As we come to worship you, pour your love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit you have given us, that your love may flow through us like a mighty river setting all the people around us free, through the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER
Psalm 70
O Lord, come quickly to help us
There is only one way that we can all be ready for Jesus when He comes again to sort us out. We have to avail ourselves of all the help that He offers us. We have no excuse because His great help, that we call His amazing grace, is always readily available to us!
Before we come to receive God’s help, we have to make sure that we deal with the people and circumstances (created by the devil) which are a hindrance to us.
Peer pressure and the wrong influence of ungodly people can easily lead us up many wrong paths which, if we follow them, will lead to our destruction! We must be careful about the company we keep and stay away from people whose advice will lead us to destruction. The best way to get help from God is to develop relationships with people who are already being blessed by the Lord: godly people who love your salvation and enjoy a real sense of freedom because Jesus has set them free from all the destructive forces in the world. Godly people will lead you to the Lord. You will find them continually happy, always rejoicing and being glad. They are happy, just like the calves penned up all night, when they are set free to run into the pastureland; jumping up and down with delight. Those who have helped you tap into the Lord’s help will join with you and lead you into worship. From the bottom of your heart you will want to exalt the Lord your God.
Today is the Day of Salvation. Don’t delay. The Lord is waiting patiently to help you seek out His people. Let them lead you into the eternal joy of God’s help.
PRAYER: Father, I need you! Oh I need you, precious Lord, I need you. Please help me lay aside those who would cause me harm and seek help from your people, so that your amazing grace will set me free, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 2ND NOVEMBER
1 Thessalonians 4.9-18
In Christ Jesus
When we totally surrender our lives to Jesus and trust in the power He released when He died on the cross to rid us of selfishness and sin and make us into new creations, then we have a wonderful experience. We are incorporated into Jesus’ body. We live our lives in Him and at the same time He lives in us. This is what Holy Communion is all about. It’s our weekly (or daily) celebration of our oneness with Jesus. We proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes again and draw on His power to keep us ‘in Christ Jesus’. The first thing Jesus does is to teach us how to love. He teaches by example and shows us that when we trust in His cross to empty ourselves of self, then we are able to live for Jesus and for others. He makes us ever so generous, kind, and forgiving. The stronger our relationship with Jesus, the more we can excel in the most wonderful art of loving. Being made more loving is a most wonderful quality of those who are in Christ Jesus. But there is something even better about being united with Him. Once we are in Him and He is in us, we stay there forever. Even though we will fall asleep into the physical death of our bodies, we will never die.
This is what Paul teaches us today. When Jesus comes again, all those who have died already will rise with Him and those still living will be drawn into heaven with them. The truth is that only those who are in Jesus and those who know Jesus will experience eternal life in heaven. This truth is knowledge revealed to us by God. It should stir us up to tell everyone about Jesus and greatly encourage them to receive Him and surrender to Him that they may join us in eternal life.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, it’s so wonderful to know you as such a good friend, to be in you and for you to be in us. Help us to stay in you and love everyone so much and to tell others about you. Help us to encourage them to get into you that they may join us in having eternal life, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
THURSDAY 3RD NOVEMBER
Joshua 24.1-3a, 14-25
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord
As Joshua points out very clearly in this reading, God is a very jealous God and when we commit our lives to Him, we have to make a whole-hearted commitment. Joshua wanted to get all the people of Israel to give their lives to God. He summoned them to a great assembly. There he reminded them of their spiritual origins: how God had called Abraham from beyond the Euphrates River (in what is now Iraq) to Canaan and called them to leave behind all foreign gods and serve only Him. Joshua told the people that he had decided to give whole-hearted allegiance to God by getting rid of all the other gods. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” As he said this, he inspired all the people to follow the one, true Lord God too, and they called out, “We, too, will serve the Lord, because He is our God.” At first Joshua was very doubtful about the fair dinkumness of their commitment. As far as he could see, the people wanted to serve the Lord and other gods as well. So he emphasised to them that God is a Holy God who would not tolerate people who wanted to serve other gods as well. He made it clear that they would have to forsake all other gods in order to serve the Lord. Praise God, they responded to his appeals and they were accepted into the community of Yahweh worshippers.
We, too, have to forsake our allegiance to the gods of money and materialism and all new age gods that society is trying to make acceptable through multiculturalism. God is still a jealous God and wants our undivided attention and whole-hearted surrender.
PRAYER: Father, we say with your servant, Joshua, we, too, will serve you. We, too, will serve the Lord Jesus. Show us what our other gods are so we can throw them away and follow only you, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
FRIDAY 4TH NOVEMBER
1 Thessalonians 5.12-28
How to stay in Christ Jesus
Some basic attitudes are essential for those who seek to stay in Christ and be really ready for Him when He comes again, or when we part from this life. God encourages us to be joyful always. There is something so wonderful about actually being in Jesus. He just makes us so happy. His joy overflows into our hearts and whatever is happening around us, be it good or bad, nothing can rob us of that joy. Jesus went to the cross with joy (Hebrews 12.2) and He fills us with joy, even in our worst sufferings.
God wants us to be in touch with Him all the time. He calls us to pray continuously. Prayer is like breathing. If we stop breathing we soon die. If we stop praying, we get awfully weak and will die spiritually. Prayer is the link between each of us and Jesus. Thirdly, God wants us to be thankful all the time. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in; God wants us to be thankful. Even when really bad things are happening, we must be thankful. Thankfulness in our hearts shows that we have the faith to believe that God is in control. If God is in control, ‘we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8.28).
As well as having these basic attitudes, we are called to live holy lives. Look back over this passage and list all the helpful hints Paul gives us to make sure we are living holy lives.
Through the Holy Spirit, God has set our hearts on fire for Him. Let’s make sure no one quenches this fire and trust in God to work in us powerfully so we can remain holy and blameless until Jesus comes.
PRAYER: Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit. Set our hearts on fire with love for Jesus. Enable us to be joyful always in Him, to pray continuously and to give thanks in all circumstances of our lives, through Jesus our wonderful Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 5TH NOVEMBER
Matthew 25.1-13
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning
The five wise virgins had an ample supply of oil. They were ready for the bridegroom when he arrived and went in to enjoy the wedding banquet with him. The foolish couldn’t be bothered to keep up the supply of oil. They let it run out and so missed the wonderful experience of sharing in the wedding banquet.
How can we relate this story to our spiritual lives? What is the oil and how can we keep its supply in our lives. Unction, or anointing with oil, has always been associated in the Bible with the work of the Holy Spirit. The oil is the power the Holy Spirit gives to us Christians. Without that power the lights go out! The light of Christ in us goes so dim that no one can recognize that we are Christians. We have little effect on other people’s lives; in fact, they tend to drag us down rather than us drawing them up to Jesus! When we are filled and keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit, our light shines very brightly. Everyone can see we are Christians and we continuously influence people to make them want to get closer to Jesus.
How can we go on being filled with the Spirit? The answer is so simple. We just ask the Father. Jesus said, “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to him who asks Him” (Luke 11.13). So prayer is the answer. If we rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances, as we learnt yesterday, we will continually be filled up with Holy Spirit power. We will be ready for any act of ministry when the opportunity arises, e.g. leading people to Jesus.
PRAYER: Father, give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning. Please keep on filling me with Holy Spirit power to enable me to be an effective witness with your light shining out of me to draw people all around me into a relationship with Jesus, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
SUNDAY 6TH.NOVEMBER
This week’s message
The theme of today’s message is that the Holy Spirit helps us to be ready for Jesus second coming. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make us holy. If we are to be ready when Jesus comes we have to be holy. In the first reading God warns us that it doesn’t matter how religious we are and how good is our worship or how many times we come to church if we are not living holy lives we will be rejected by the Lord when He comes.
To be holy we must love everyone and be in a right relationship with them. We must be treating everyone fairly and we must be hard working always pulling our weight. We must be like Jesus!
This is very hard because there is a tendency in all of us to be selfish. We become like Jesus when we completely surrender our lives to Him and trust in the power He released when He died on the cross to rid us al all selfishness and sin.
Once we have become like Jesus we have to stay like Him. To enable us to stay like Jesus, He has given us the Holy Spirit.
In our Gospel reading for today Jesus talks about the five virgins who had plenty of oil for their lamps and were ready for the bridegroom when He came and the five foolish virgins who missed out because they did not take enough oil to keep their lamps burning. The oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Once we have received salvation from Jesus He is always ready to keep on filling us with the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is to ask him (See Luke 11:13).
When I was in India I saw a bridegroom’s procession on its way to a wedding. Instead of oil lamps they had electric lights. They were powered by a portable generator on wheels that they pulled along. Once we receive Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Saviour, He is the generator that Keeps His light shining out of us. The Holy Spirit is the power that keeps us alight. To enable us to be constantly filled with the Spirit we have to have a lot of faith all the time.
If we follow Paul’s advice in I Thessalonians 5; 16,17 & 18 By rejoicing always, praying continually and giving thanks in all circumstances, then we will be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will keep us holy and will help us to be ready to meet Jesus when He comes again to judge the world.
MONDAY 31ST OCTOBER
Amos 5.18-24
Let justice and righteousness flow like a never-ending stream
We come to that time of the year when we concentrate our thoughts on the second coming of Jesus and the day of judgment. On that day we will have our whole lives sifted through to see if we are acceptable to God for eternal life.
When Amos gave this prophecy about the Day of the Lord, the moral life of the Israelite community had deteriorated. Although they were still very religious, they were only thinking of themselves. They were being unjust and hard to each other, and were often at loggerheads with each other. The people thought they were pleasing God by the way they offered sacrifices to Him, and the more psalms and hymns they sang in their religious gatherings.
God really shocked them by telling them that He couldn’t stand their religious gatherings and couldn’t tolerate their songs. Surely God loved to be worshipped and adored? The reason God could not accept their worship was because it did not match with their lives.
When God comes to judge us, He will be looking for people whose lives are like rivers of love. People who surrender their lives to Jesus and let Him take over, have His love flowing out of their hearts like a river, making them kind and generous, making them just and fair, making strong relationships with all the people around. The worship of truly surrendered people is a time of infilling when the rivers of love burst their banks as God pours love into their hearts by the Holy Spirit He has given them.
PRAYER: Father, we want to be ready on the Day of the Lord, when we face judgment. We totally surrender our whole lives to you. As we come to worship you, pour your love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit you have given us, that your love may flow through us like a mighty river setting all the people around us free, through the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
TUESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER
Psalm 70
O Lord, come quickly to help us
There is only one way that we can all be ready for Jesus when He comes again to sort us out. We have to avail ourselves of all the help that He offers us. We have no excuse because His great help, that we call His amazing grace, is always readily available to us!
Before we come to receive God’s help, we have to make sure that we deal with the people and circumstances (created by the devil) which are a hindrance to us.
Peer pressure and the wrong influence of ungodly people can easily lead us up many wrong paths which, if we follow them, will lead to our destruction! We must be careful about the company we keep and stay away from people whose advice will lead us to destruction. The best way to get help from God is to develop relationships with people who are already being blessed by the Lord: godly people who love your salvation and enjoy a real sense of freedom because Jesus has set them free from all the destructive forces in the world. Godly people will lead you to the Lord. You will find them continually happy, always rejoicing and being glad. They are happy, just like the calves penned up all night, when they are set free to run into the pastureland; jumping up and down with delight. Those who have helped you tap into the Lord’s help will join with you and lead you into worship. From the bottom of your heart you will want to exalt the Lord your God.
Today is the Day of Salvation. Don’t delay. The Lord is waiting patiently to help you seek out His people. Let them lead you into the eternal joy of God’s help.
PRAYER: Father, I need you! Oh I need you, precious Lord, I need you. Please help me lay aside those who would cause me harm and seek help from your people, so that your amazing grace will set me free, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
WEDNESDAY 2ND NOVEMBER
1 Thessalonians 4.9-18
In Christ Jesus
When we totally surrender our lives to Jesus and trust in the power He released when He died on the cross to rid us of selfishness and sin and make us into new creations, then we have a wonderful experience. We are incorporated into Jesus’ body. We live our lives in Him and at the same time He lives in us. This is what Holy Communion is all about. It’s our weekly (or daily) celebration of our oneness with Jesus. We proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes again and draw on His power to keep us ‘in Christ Jesus’. The first thing Jesus does is to teach us how to love. He teaches by example and shows us that when we trust in His cross to empty ourselves of self, then we are able to live for Jesus and for others. He makes us ever so generous, kind, and forgiving. The stronger our relationship with Jesus, the more we can excel in the most wonderful art of loving. Being made more loving is a most wonderful quality of those who are in Christ Jesus. But there is something even better about being united with Him. Once we are in Him and He is in us, we stay there forever. Even though we will fall asleep into the physical death of our bodies, we will never die.
This is what Paul teaches us today. When Jesus comes again, all those who have died already will rise with Him and those still living will be drawn into heaven with them. The truth is that only those who are in Jesus and those who know Jesus will experience eternal life in heaven. This truth is knowledge revealed to us by God. It should stir us up to tell everyone about Jesus and greatly encourage them to receive Him and surrender to Him that they may join us in eternal life.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, it’s so wonderful to know you as such a good friend, to be in you and for you to be in us. Help us to stay in you and love everyone so much and to tell others about you. Help us to encourage them to get into you that they may join us in having eternal life, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
THURSDAY 3RD NOVEMBER
Joshua 24.1-3a, 14-25
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord
As Joshua points out very clearly in this reading, God is a very jealous God and when we commit our lives to Him, we have to make a whole-hearted commitment. Joshua wanted to get all the people of Israel to give their lives to God. He summoned them to a great assembly. There he reminded them of their spiritual origins: how God had called Abraham from beyond the Euphrates River (in what is now Iraq) to Canaan and called them to leave behind all foreign gods and serve only Him. Joshua told the people that he had decided to give whole-hearted allegiance to God by getting rid of all the other gods. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” As he said this, he inspired all the people to follow the one, true Lord God too, and they called out, “We, too, will serve the Lord, because He is our God.” At first Joshua was very doubtful about the fair dinkumness of their commitment. As far as he could see, the people wanted to serve the Lord and other gods as well. So he emphasised to them that God is a Holy God who would not tolerate people who wanted to serve other gods as well. He made it clear that they would have to forsake all other gods in order to serve the Lord. Praise God, they responded to his appeals and they were accepted into the community of Yahweh worshippers.
We, too, have to forsake our allegiance to the gods of money and materialism and all new age gods that society is trying to make acceptable through multiculturalism. God is still a jealous God and wants our undivided attention and whole-hearted surrender.
PRAYER: Father, we say with your servant, Joshua, we, too, will serve you. We, too, will serve the Lord Jesus. Show us what our other gods are so we can throw them away and follow only you, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
FRIDAY 4TH NOVEMBER
1 Thessalonians 5.12-28
How to stay in Christ Jesus
Some basic attitudes are essential for those who seek to stay in Christ and be really ready for Him when He comes again, or when we part from this life. God encourages us to be joyful always. There is something so wonderful about actually being in Jesus. He just makes us so happy. His joy overflows into our hearts and whatever is happening around us, be it good or bad, nothing can rob us of that joy. Jesus went to the cross with joy (Hebrews 12.2) and He fills us with joy, even in our worst sufferings.
God wants us to be in touch with Him all the time. He calls us to pray continuously. Prayer is like breathing. If we stop breathing we soon die. If we stop praying, we get awfully weak and will die spiritually. Prayer is the link between each of us and Jesus. Thirdly, God wants us to be thankful all the time. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in; God wants us to be thankful. Even when really bad things are happening, we must be thankful. Thankfulness in our hearts shows that we have the faith to believe that God is in control. If God is in control, ‘we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8.28).
As well as having these basic attitudes, we are called to live holy lives. Look back over this passage and list all the helpful hints Paul gives us to make sure we are living holy lives.
Through the Holy Spirit, God has set our hearts on fire for Him. Let’s make sure no one quenches this fire and trust in God to work in us powerfully so we can remain holy and blameless until Jesus comes.
PRAYER: Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit. Set our hearts on fire with love for Jesus. Enable us to be joyful always in Him, to pray continuously and to give thanks in all circumstances of our lives, through Jesus our wonderful Saviour. Amen.
SATURDAY 5TH NOVEMBER
Matthew 25.1-13
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning
The five wise virgins had an ample supply of oil. They were ready for the bridegroom when he arrived and went in to enjoy the wedding banquet with him. The foolish couldn’t be bothered to keep up the supply of oil. They let it run out and so missed the wonderful experience of sharing in the wedding banquet.
How can we relate this story to our spiritual lives? What is the oil and how can we keep its supply in our lives. Unction, or anointing with oil, has always been associated in the Bible with the work of the Holy Spirit. The oil is the power the Holy Spirit gives to us Christians. Without that power the lights go out! The light of Christ in us goes so dim that no one can recognize that we are Christians. We have little effect on other people’s lives; in fact, they tend to drag us down rather than us drawing them up to Jesus! When we are filled and keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit, our light shines very brightly. Everyone can see we are Christians and we continuously influence people to make them want to get closer to Jesus.
How can we go on being filled with the Spirit? The answer is so simple. We just ask the Father. Jesus said, “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to him who asks Him” (Luke 11.13). So prayer is the answer. If we rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances, as we learnt yesterday, we will continually be filled up with Holy Spirit power. We will be ready for any act of ministry when the opportunity arises, e.g. leading people to Jesus.
PRAYER: Father, give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning. Please keep on filling me with Holy Spirit power to enable me to be an effective witness with your light shining out of me to draw people all around me into a relationship with Jesus, through Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
SUNDAY 6TH.NOVEMBER
This week’s message
The theme of today’s message is that the Holy Spirit helps us to be ready for Jesus second coming. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make us holy. If we are to be ready when Jesus comes we have to be holy. In the first reading God warns us that it doesn’t matter how religious we are and how good is our worship or how many times we come to church if we are not living holy lives we will be rejected by the Lord when He comes.
To be holy we must love everyone and be in a right relationship with them. We must be treating everyone fairly and we must be hard working always pulling our weight. We must be like Jesus!
This is very hard because there is a tendency in all of us to be selfish. We become like Jesus when we completely surrender our lives to Him and trust in the power He released when He died on the cross to rid us al all selfishness and sin.
Once we have become like Jesus we have to stay like Him. To enable us to stay like Jesus, He has given us the Holy Spirit.
In our Gospel reading for today Jesus talks about the five virgins who had plenty of oil for their lamps and were ready for the bridegroom when He came and the five foolish virgins who missed out because they did not take enough oil to keep their lamps burning. The oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Once we have received salvation from Jesus He is always ready to keep on filling us with the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is to ask him (See Luke 11:13).
When I was in India I saw a bridegroom’s procession on its way to a wedding. Instead of oil lamps they had electric lights. They were powered by a portable generator on wheels that they pulled along. Once we receive Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Saviour, He is the generator that Keeps His light shining out of us. The Holy Spirit is the power that keeps us alight. To enable us to be constantly filled with the Spirit we have to have a lot of faith all the time.
If we follow Paul’s advice in I Thessalonians 5; 16,17 & 18 By rejoicing always, praying continually and giving thanks in all circumstances, then we will be constantly filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will keep us holy and will help us to be ready to meet Jesus when He comes again to judge the world.