This Week With Jesus

  David said - “Praise ye the Lord, fruitful trees and all cedars.” why this special reference among all trees? Have you heard of the Cedars of Lebanon? No? So let's look at some important facts and why they are important for Christians.  The Cedars of Lebanon are referenced more than  103  times in the Bible. They are said to be Cedars of God, planted or created by God. They have been around since time itself. Solomon used cedar for the Temple, it is used as a purifier, it does not need watering and can survive indefinitely. The Hebrew word for it signifies strength of roots. Why is it important for Christians? The age of many of the cedar trees in Lebanon, most particularly in Besharry, goes back hundreds of years prior to Christ's incarnation. The cedar is mentioned in Sirach 24,13ff. It is known as the cedrus exaltata,  the exalted ceda r. But most importantly, the Cedars are like Christians or Gods people. Like the cedar, Christians are not Christians by their choice but b

Don't lose your loaf. Eat at at once. Otherwise it may get spoilt ! Exodus 16:16 This is the thing which the Lord has commanded: ‘Let every man gather it according to each one’s need, one omer for each person, according to the number of persons; let every man take for those who are in his tent.’ ” An interesting question comes to mind - God is our provider. The question is dies he provide me according to what I need or according to what I want. In my opinion, God is providing all the essential needs required for all of us on the long-term basis. We can get to know them, if we seek the help of spiritual leaders. If we are unable to find such spiritual leaders, we can get to know the same after we encounter few crucial experiences in our life.  But more importantly, I think what matters is if God has provided us extra, what do we do with it. Do we store it or do we invest it in His work? God does not want us to depend on stored provision, but on Himself, to continually depend on Him

Don't let man made traditions become a convenient  substitute for God's Laws and directions.  

One of the biggest problems with us humans is our ability to analyze. In fact that ability has become an escape route from the job before us. This problem is extremely prevalent in the corporate world but also in the spiritual world. We love to analyze Gods word from every direction and every depth, to the extent we forget to follow Gods word.   What is the point of Bible studies, sermons and devotionals if we do not act upon them but get lost in analyzing them? Proverbs 3:5-6 says  “Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track." Jane Glenhur asks,  "When you are listening for God's answer are you analyzing your choices and trying to figure out which is best?" Invariably the person says yes. That is my clue to suggest that if we use that quiet time of listening to reason out the best answer, we will miss God's respons

Someone defined forgiveness as the sweet smell given by a rose as it is crushed!  What a powerful expression of forgiveness. In our experience, the closest expression to it that  we have experienced is that of Graham Staines.  In 2003, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his family were evangelizing in a remote part of the world, when one night, as Staines slept with his two sons in the back of their vehicle, some people set fire to the car and burnt the three of them alive. Staines was survived by his wife and one daughter. The murderers were caught and went on trial. When Mrs. Staines was asked for her comments, she simply said, "I forgive (them)" !  In 2005, she was awarded the fourth highest honor a civilian can receive in that country  in recognition for her work . In 2016, she received the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice. I cannot ever imagine what Mrs. Staines and her daughter must have gone through and what courage and faith it mus

 

You trust God. Can God trust you? “But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust.” (Numbers 12.7). That’s God speaking, by the way. Very clearly differentiating between those of His people He can trust those He can't. There is a lot of discussion and talk around the fact that we need to trust God and have faith in Him at all times. Very true. But very clearly, we need to have God trust us as well!, which may not always be the case as we can see from the opening verse. This is a game changer! Think about how God can build His trust in us. But first let's think about how we can lose Gods trust. Let's talk about Trust Breakers and Trust Builders. What are they ? Trust Breakers A. Broken promises when we were down in the dumps praying for God's helping hand? And have we kept that vow? If we haven't that's a trust breaker right there. Did not the Israelites, Gods own people, break His trust and wander around in circles for 40 years? B. God a