Unity

Guest Post 

There is strength in Numbers; in togetherness. The great thing about this season is that it brings people together. 

I remember watching The World Cup when I was younger, I really didn’t care about football but for some reason I got into football for that period; It was great having family and friends around and everyone rooting for the same team. The excitement in the room when we all unanimously screamed “GOAL”!!

Something similar happened with the Nativity Story. Mary had just given birth, her and her husband finally settled in a manger somewhere not too far from the fields where some sheep and their shepherds lay.

And so an angel appeared to the Shepherds and said, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” – Luke 2:10-12

Immediately after, There was a host of Angels who had gathered around and were praising God. The shepherd also went to see the new born King. Wise men came to see Jesus too. All of a sudden, people from nowhere were coming round to see one Child, Christ – the sole unifying factor for all!  

Like the excitement that The World cup brought, the birth of Christ was also to bring Great Joy to ALL, not just for the year of His birth or the duration of His lifetime, but for several years even after His death.

Isaiah 9:6-7 (TM) tells us this “For a child has been born—for us! the gift of a son—for us!

He’ll take over the running of the world. His names will be: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. His ruling authority will grow and there’ll be no limits to the Peace He brings”

Christ Brought peace, love, joy... He made a way out, everything was now on Him; He was going to rule the world and sort things out. He basically gave us a chance to relax and stop running our own world whilst being worried and stressed out about things. He is in control Now.

Somehow we’ve let that Unity slip away from us. Even when we gather around for Christmas, everyone is still killing time on apps, social networks and our cyber world. Our friends and families are sitting across from us at the table but we’re too busy sending SMS's to people in our phones that we cannot say actual words to the people we love.

Maybe it’s not a time issue, maybe we’re not too busy to help each other, maybe we are just caught up in unforgiveness and the past. 

Whatever it is, it is time to let those reasons go and bring back Unity.  Colossians 3:14b “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which holds you all together in perfect unity”. The love that we need has already been displayed in a perfect sacrifice and we are to follow that example; putting ourselves aside so we can help others get ahead (Philippians 2:3). It’s time to be interested in the lives of others enough to encourage them and lift them up when they are down (Phil 2:4)

In this time of year, we are to reconcile. God not only wants you to have peace with Him; He also wants you to have peace (goodwill) with other people, too (Luke 2:14). Rick Warren says this “Rather than promoting harmony, holiday seasons often become a time of conflict. All families have difficulties; there are jealousies, grudges, resentment, and misunderstanding”. How can a body be divided against itself?

When Christ is in you and me, then Christ isn't going to argue with Christ. We're never going to have peace on Earth until the Prince of Peace reigns in everybody's heart, and that’s why we need to reconcile with God and with other people.

So in this season, let’s get on the same team. We are one In Christ. We are strong together, when we are Unified. 

J.O.

New Shoes

The fire crackled and blazed, in the cold of the winter as they gathered together that evening. The year and all its activities had gone by ever so quickly and now it was coming to an end. The annual tradition of this house was to present a new pair of shoes to a person they believe had excelled the most that year. It was never an easy decision to make, so as always Mr Potter and his wife deliberated for a number of days about the candidates for this year.

As the sun lifted its face upon the horizon of the globe, the Potter’s rose and gave God thanks. “My God you have enabled us to see another day, as you kept us through the night. Please guide our thoughts and our actions in all we do today and let us be drawn to the right pair of shoes.”

Once the coffee had brewed and breakfast ingested, they set off in search of the anticipated gift. The shop was filled with great variety and the choices seem to overwhelm them.

“Can I be of any help to you?” the young assistant asked.

“Yes, we are looking for a pair of shoes to give to a friend ours later tonight.” They replied.

“Well you have definitely come to the right place; we have all types of shoes in every colour imaginable. We’ve got many textures and materials from suede to authentic leather. You’re bound to find the right type of shoe for your friend!”

Before she had the chance to continue Mrs Potter interrupted with a question. “Young lady, what do you propose that the purpose of a shoe is?”

Perplexed by the intention of the question the young assistant paused. She gazed at the floor and with the look of concentration reflecting so evidently from her face, began to speak what she believed. “I believe that shoes are designed to compliment an outfit, for any and every occasion”  

Mr Potter glanced at his wife, just in time to see the grin that had crept up on her face. She asked him “would you like to do the honours this year Mr Potter?”

“Certainly my beauty” he replied, then proceeded to face the direction of the assistant who now looked as though she regretted coming to their aid.

“Every year, for the past 25years, we buy a new pair of shoes for the person we consider to have made a significant achievement. It’s not the shoes that matter to us, but it’s the meaning behind them that does. The added bonus of a shoe is that it compliments your outfit. But the very purpose of a shoe is that it protects your interests. Your feet were made for walking, so where your feet go you go. As Christians we carry the light, and light is not useful unless it shines in a darker place. There are many places in this world that have been longing to see, but the darkness that surrounds them has not yet been dealt with. We carry the very Source of Light, but only obedience and persistence will spread that light. An athlete never uses the same pair of shoes for the entire duration of their career. It eventually gets worn out, tears and doesn’t provide the stability and support it once did. Figuratively speaking our friend has run a hard race this year and his shoes have grown weary so to speak. So in order for him to continue his race we are looking for a shoe of the following description: Its soles need to be a firm foundation, one that represents The solid rock; Jesus Christ. Its material needs to be durable, weather-proof and suitable in every God given season. The interior should be as gentle as his Master and as comforting as the good news he is going to tell the world. Its laces should be knitted firmly through each loop with precision and with purpose. As for its colour, well love that doesn’t matter. God doesn’t judge on the outward appearance, it’s the condition of one’s heart that counts, so its colour and style can be as crazy or as subtle as you like, for every character has a place in God’s kingdom. I’ve said this not to confuse you but rather to enlighten you so the next time you slip your feet in a shoe, you’ll be reminded of this conversation we had. A shoe protects your interest. My interest is God’s interest and God’s interest is you. You have been loved for longer than you or I will ever know; you have been watched over from the time of your conception. The One who has your interest at heart, waits patiently for you to meet Him. Today He sent me to let you know that He is knocking at the door of your heart, if you’d just use everything you have within you let Him in, He’ll brighten up your life with the source of His light. Then your shoes will have a purpose in Him”

Butterflies fly! – Free people, free people!

Guest Post

Butterflies are first caterpillars, but caterpillars are purposefully created to be butterflies...This is the same for us, we were created to be free but we were captive first! Our lives and that of butterflies are so similar. Once caterpillars realise they have wings to fly they are free but they are not born free! Rather through a process, they transform into these beautiful free beings!

Let’s consider the well known children’s book ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. Firstly the caterpillar comes out of its egg hungry. We were born to be filled with Jesus; although born into sin we hunger for salvation. As the book progresses we notice the caterpillar searches far and wide for something, anything, to satisfy his hunger.

1.    1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges

2.    Chocolate cake, ice cream, pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, cupcake, slice of watermelon

3.    A single leaf

As humans we search for quick fixes and tend to look to things to satisfy us but a void still remains. Notice that the caterpillar first eats the ‘good stuff’ i.e. fruits, we also can look to people, money and our title to satisfy our longing and this may not seem remotely sinful or bad but they are not designed to restore us.

Then the caterpillar turns to ‘junk’ and after ends up with a stomach ache? You would think that after eating so much you would be full and satisfied right? Not in this case. The day after, we see a shift, the caterpillar decides to eat a leaf (food more suited to a caterpillar), and guess what after this he wasn’t hungry anymore (see where I’m going with this...). As Christians we need to be able to go to the right person to fill our hunger, fill the void, the emptiness! This person is God and once you have your ‘God dose’ you will be oh so full (just like some of us on Christmas day :p). John 6: 35 explicitly states this!

After the caterpillar became full he retreated into his shell and two weeks later sprung out as a beautiful butterfly! Freedom!..But it was only after he got the dose of the right food! Revelation 3:20 simply says Gods stands at our door and politely knocks, if we open He will come and eat with us, and us eat with him (paraphrased). He’s the good stuff!

In addition, turning into a butterfly means the caterpillar’s existence is totally destroyed - as a butterfly is built anew! This is the same for us; God uses our past as building blocks to bring us up while satan wants to use it to bring us down! But what satan doesn’t realise is that without the caterpillar in its state there would be no butterfly.

It’s important to highlight that butterflies and caterpillars have different diets; a butterfly cannot eat what it used to eat when it was a caterpillar and vice versa. When you are a butterfly and know freedom do you really want to go back and eat what you ate as a caterpillar? It may be tempting but you realise there is something better.

Let people see you soar, fly over mountains - and yes mountains exists -  but remember you are a butterfly made to fly and you have the strength and capability to do so!

A.A.

Do the “...scars i have on my body show that I am the slave of Jesus....” (Galatians 6:17)?

Guest Post

This question is food for thought! Imagine you bought a passion fruit and from the outside it looked like one, inside you’d expect to see...numerous seeds maybe? A soft juicy interior? But if you cut it open to find that it has no seeds whatsoever but instead has a very hard centre, you’d question it?!

It holds parallel to our lives as Christians. From the outside we can be seen to possess certain characteristics especially in this day and age, with freedom of choice! Anyone can be a Christian regardless of nationality which is a beautiful thing!

Unlike other faiths we cannot be physically distinguished as easily when casually walking down the high street (well unless you are a nun or a member of the clergy). So it is through our words and deeds that the God we serve is reflected! I once heard someone say “if my character doesn’t speak for itself my words mean nothing”. Sad to say we have become one of the most liberal ‘religious groups’, and society cannot see a difference in us because we’ve blended in with the world that much!

Compromise is something which needs to be tackled head on! As a muslim wouldn’t compromise their belief in not eating pork we need to resist compromising our belief to please man and shift the focus back onto pleasing He who is worthy: God! A few months ago I faced what was then a dilemma of being invited to a club for the birthday of one of my cousins. As soon as I got the invite I knew that I shouldn’t go!? As a carrier of Christ I thought “does He want to be there?!” But I didn’t want to ‘let her down’ Hmmm, okay so who is my master in this situation? I want to please God but also please man!

I pondered long and hard and knew that she wouldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go and try and persuade me to come! Then I got thinking to myself: as much as Christ has delivered us from bondage and given us this free will, we shouldn’t shift the focus and move further away from Him! We now have Christians stating the Christian community are hypocrites, and it’s all because our lives do not match with that which God designed for us! To-be-set-apart! We are not meant to blend in with everyone!

Trust me your reward is coming!! Yes it’s hard, just as a chameleon we feel more comfortable blending in with our environment, we feel secure and safer that way. But this life is not permanent and the eternity you would live will be oh so rewarding! Trust! We do not want to go evangelising on the street anymore because we don’t want to lose our rep?! Our rep that only lasts till we slip up! Is it really worth it...

“Every athlete in training submits to strict discipline, in order to be crowned with a wreath that will not last; but we do it for one that will last forever” (1 Corinthians 10:25)

Christ died for you, He loves you, yes you, every part of you even the parts you don’t like and He’s never left your side! Sometimes we feel as though he’s far but in times like that guess who’s moved? All He’s asking is for us to be His representatives. He suffered majorly yet STILL worshipped His Father! How many of us would readily accept nails in our hands for your child casually lying to their teacher?!...
But Christ did and He sure didn’t deserve it but He still did! 

...”Make sure that Christ’s death on the cross is not robbed of its power”  (1 Corinthians 1:17)

Some of us live in parts of the world where our love for Christ cannot be declared freely, but individuals in such countries are doing more than we who live in a free society! Let’s do something about it family... 

“If you suffer because you are a Christian, don’t be ashamed of it, but thank God that you bear Christ’s name”  (1 Peter 4:16)

-x-

If memory serves

I remember being young and in Sunday school learning songs, and reciting bible verses! At first it seemed like a drag, excess work and I didn’t really understand why we were being made to learn them... Trust me I do now! 

There are certain scripture verses I remember only because of those songs! 

As I grew older, although I still read the bible, I stopped learning the verses. I could say the “common” scripture verses when required, and get all excited, but I wanted it to go deeper than “public displays”, I wanted a “secret reality”. 

The bible is full of so much sense and wisdom, words to encourage and bring hope in those desperate times. But we must realise that we won’t know what keys to life it contains if we don’t take the time to study AND memorise. And yes it is the same type of studying that we would do in order to pass a momentary exam?! Wouldn't you want to know what can be done in order to get through this test we call life? 

In Psalm 119:9&11 King David writes: “How can a young person stay pure? By living according to Your word. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” (this purity extends further than just sex, its purity of mind & action)

The word of God is God himself. It's Christ! Which means it's the source of life itself. It gives us a reality check and it’s our battle weapon – sharper than any double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12) – even the devil knows scripture, and he proved so when he tried to tempt Jesus! (Matthew 4) If Jesus never knew scripture, he wouldn't have been able to dash satan back in his place and that would've been it for us! Eeekkk!?

This topic is more to bring awareness about the importance of the knowledge of God's word. Let me leave you with these two scripture verses:

1. Colossians 3:16a – "Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives."

2. James 1:23-25 - “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and immediately forgets what they look like. BUT whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.”

*sings* "read your bible, pray everyday, pray everyday, prayer everyday...!"

What did you say?

What we are putting in our bodies is important to our physical health and well  being. Conversely what we allow to come out of our mouths is AS, if not MORE, important! 

In the book of James chapter 3 we are told about the power that this small part of the body has in directing the course of our lives! Crazy right?! But what we say can create positive situations OR cause their destruction!! 

Words are the building blocks of life that can literally make or break an individual – if you think negative, you’ll most likely speak negative and ultimately act negatively – and the sad thing is many of us, including myself, don’t really realise that! 

The simplest of sayings such as forever talking down on yourself e.g. “I’ll never be as smart as them” or “I’m forever tired” (one of my personal favourite?!) or “what’s the point in trying, I’ll just fail anyway” *sigh* – well have we ever thought that we possibly fail, because we always say we’ll fail, so act like we’ve already failed – then fail? Just a thought! 

No-one likes to be around someone that wreaks negativity, they’re depressing (it’s worse than dealing with B.O)! It cannot emphasise enough that we were made with the ability to do sooo much, but we can’t just expect to get up one day and do it to a high standard without vigorously exercising the skill required. Exercise = Pain. The more you gym, the stronger and more fit you become for the task (regardless of the muscular pain along the way!). 

Remember what we say about ourselves, others, our situations and our future is VITAL to what it/they/we will be.

Psalm 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditation (thoughts) of my heart be pleasing to you Lord” – Lets evaluate our oral dictionary and CHOOSE to speak life!

To gain the world (2)...

Sometimes in order to stand out we have to be willing to stand alone. 

Many of us including myself are afraid to live an “isolated life” if that’s what it will take in order to stand out. Psalm 24:1 tells us that we don’t belong to ourselves: “the Earth is the Lords and everything in it” So technically we should be willing to give back what is not ours.

The greatest story of sacrifice is that of Jesus laying down His life for us. A sacrifice usually costs something; there may be a price to pay. We stand out to be given out, we stand out to be given out. The keyword in the definition of this word sacrifice is the word “offering”, the offering of something (e.g. money, animals, yourself), usually to a greater cause or a “higher being”, in our case: to GOD.

Let’s look at the story if Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3:

The King wanted them to bow to the idol he had created. What in our lives can be, or are, idols? (E.g. Food, TV, internet, music, friends, even phones – how many of us can honestly survive without their phones for 3days?)

The devil has sly and cunning ways of creating “idols” in our lives that can distract us and cause us to lose that special touch on our relationship with Christ. This is similar to these three lads, I mean all they really had to do was bow right, why must they be the only ones to remain standing, when everyone else was bowing? Plus their lives were on the line, if they didn’t bow they would be killed.

Besides when they got back home or went back to church on the following Sunday they could have jumped back on the “hosanna train” and reasoned with God “ah God man, You understand right? We didn’t wanna be seen as the crazy Christian dudes that never get involved with anything”

They refused. They wouldn’t compromise. Part of standing out is the willingness not to compromise, because of the fear of what others will say, think or do. (This counts especially when you make a stand out against something that you’ve been so used to doing). 

Sometimes we have to get to a point of saying “I’m going to do/not going to do ‘xyz’” regardless of what “they” may think – who are “they” anyway - let me put it this way, if your friends cannot respect your decision for or against certain things you decide on, then they never really were your friend in the first place, and it’s probably best to let them go! Say “buh-bye”

Standing out for a greater cause doesn’t automatically mean that life will become smooth sailing, as these gentlemen soon found out. The king ordered that the fire in the furnace was heated 7times hotter than its normal temperature.

When the devil notices that you aren’t falling prey to his trap, or aren’t really intimidated by him; when he notices that you are still gonna stay on the Lord’s side regardless, then believe me he will turn up the heat in order to try and make you crack under pressure!

I’ll give a personal example, whenever my relationship with God seems to be going well, a situation tends to arise where I may have to make a decision about something – “do I not do it and please God, or do I do it and sort it out with God later” – say I decide not to do it on this occasion, and please God in this matter, it’s like at that precise moment the devil says “eeehhhh, okaaay, we shall see”, he plays with my emotions, my peace, my work – sometimes I find no motivation to work, or I really struggle with understanding something, then I become really down about it and isolate myself, or just wanna sleep 24/7 to forget about the fact that I have work I cannot handle, I get further behind and if I don’t manage to catch up I might stress at the last minute – but God always steps in just at the right time! And although there is a lot about God’s timing that I personally do not understand, what I do know is that it is always on-time (although it actually may not seem that way!)

So back to the story – the guys got thrown into the fire, expecting to die an instant death, but did not get hurt – God stepped in at just the right time, their willingness to sacrifice caused them to stand out, and in the end they won the respect of the king, plus got promoted! Those people that want to see you trip and fall will not see you go to ruin, they will respect you and promote you in Jesus name!

John 15 vs 18 & 19  “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.

It's time to say "haters move back, I'm on the Lord's side!"