This Week With Jesus

One day we will all be a picture on someone's wall. Or maybe in a wallet, or in a frame on the table in someone's drawing room. When people see the picture what will they remember? Success? Failure? Honesty? Gratitude? I think none of the above. But they will see another picture in their minds - a picture based on characteristics exhibited by us, hopefully of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. How will we rate against these characteristics? What will our picture communicate to those who see it? Will it inspire the viewer to inculcate those traits, or will it inspire nothing? Whatever it inspires is the legacy we will have left behind. It is this nature that will define whether our profession of Christianity has been successful . Those who are in Christ are distinguished from unbelievers in that they have been gifted with the Holy Spirit, enabling them to bear fruit, that is the fruits of the Spirit. Our belief that we do h

 

  You can't get away from God! Moses, Jonah, Lot, Abraham, Elijah, and so many more had a calling from God to do His work - as many of us still do. Some of these gentlemen meekly did what they were told, and some tried to run away, just as we do. The story of each one of these folks indicates just one thing: If God has called you, don't try and run. You can't! So here is Nellie, a member of the Hilton Street Church who tells it like it is. 

 All we have is time.  I, you and we belong to a world where more is less. We want more of everything, from food to clothes to cars, to education and other luxuries and we want more time to do what we want to do. When we get what we wanted, we dream and want the next level. We want it for ourselves as well as for our children, which is natural. And our children want the same for  their  children. And the story goes on till it can no longer, because we die. And we spend the last few years of our lives deciding who to give what, of what is left of what we have collected. So we spend 20 years dreaming, 40 years acquiring and then the last phase where we are giving or rather planning to give or praying hard to get more time for all of this.  Covid broke that vicious circle for me.   I and my family were stuck in a foreign country for more than 2 years. We had planned travel for 1 month but spent 2 years and more. Everything we had was in our home which was locked up and deserted. We had to

For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. — Ezra 8:22 The story of Ezra is very often our story as well. His situation was very similar, yet while he demonstrated faith to the point of facing death, we fail miserably, seeking the help of fellow men, while professing faith in God. We profess all blessings of God and His power to help us overcome any mountains we face. We say God provides. Yet in the time of adversity, we run to our fellow men for their help. Will that cry for their help not dishonor the very God we professed to them? Will they not laugh and think, where is the God we so highly talked about? Craving aid from man dishonors the very God we proclaim to have saved us. Yes, God may work through man. He may send an angel in times of our

 

And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God (Exodus 29:46). God living among men. What a fantastic thought! What security, what peace! And yet... The sin of man is so loathsome to God that When God appeared even to his servant Moses, he said, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet”; and when he manifested himself upon Mount Sinai, to his own chosen and separated people, one of the first commands was, “Thou shalt set bounds about the mount.” Both in the sacred worship of the tabernacle and the temple, the thought of distance was always prominent. The mass of the people did not even enter the outer court. Into the inner court none but the priests might dare to intrude; while into the innermost place, or the holy of holies, the high priest entered but once in the year. It was as if the Lord in those early ages would teach man that sin was so utterly loathsome to him