Month: January 2024

Time Matters

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I decided to write some articles for Bloganuary, an annual blogging start of year encouragement on WordPress.com

Today’s prompt: Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

As a pastor, I spend a significant amount of time thinking about the future. God gives us dreams and visions about how our lives as individuals and as a community of faith might develop over the years ahead.

To do this, I need to think about the past also. How does my past inform my future plans? What has worked or hindered the vision in the past.

In another sense, I have to think about the past whenever I read the Scriptures. The are God’s living words to His people right now. How do I reach into an ancient culture to understand the followers of Jesus in order to bring their experience into the present?

The Biblical understanding of “remembering” was very different to ours. When Jesus tells us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in memory of Him, He is not just telling us to act out an event that happened two thousand years ago. Similarly when the Jews celebrated Passover, it was not just about ancient history. To remember means that we bring the events of the past into the present and allow them to transform us now.

Past, present and future all impinge equally in our lives. But then there is eternity, where time takes on a very different meaning. Followers of Jesus will live forever in a perfect, reconstructed heavens and earth. That seems like the far future, but really it isn’t that far from us.

Any one of us could die in the next 24 hours and find ourselves in the presence of God. Then all of our earthly lives will be past tense. We will be asked to give an account of our lives. Those who faithfully followed Jesus will be brought into heaven, while those who rejected Him will be “cast into the outer darkness.”

Reflection on Isaiah 21

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Scripture

Then the watchman said, “Babylon is fallen, fallen. All the idols of Babylon lie broken on the ground.”

Observation

Disaster is coming to Babylon as the Elamites and Medes lay siege to it. The Lord is bringing to an end the groaning caused by Babylon.

The watchman looks day after day, seeing nothing. Then a messenger comes with the news that Babylon is fallen and all of its idols are broken.

Edom looks for daylight from this, but the night will soon return. Within a year the glory of Kedar will come to an end.

Application

Babylon was the centre of a great empire that included Israel. In the Bible, it is a symbol for the political and commercial powers in the in the world system

The mighty empire of the Babylonians fell, and its false gods could not save it.

No matter how secure and and prosperous we may feel, our safety and prosperity rely on God. Anything else that we build our lives on will eventually fall and and let us down.

The false gods and idols that Babylon relied on, and all of its military might and physical resources, could not save it.

Only God can provide us with eternal security. Only God can take us out of this world and carry us safely to the next.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the promise of your perfect protection. Every idol will fall, but you, O God, live forever. Amen.

Quote for the Day

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Effective small group leaders don’t just “lead a group.” They raise up leaders to reach the world. They help the body of Christ minister to its members. They create a spiritual family and build a spiritual army. When small group leaders understand this dream, they immediately raise the value of their groups in the eyes of each member. Dave Earley

Reflection on Isaiah 20

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Scripture

Then the Philistines will be thrown into panic, for they counted on the power of Ethiopia and boasted of their allies in Egypt.

Observation

Isaiah was commanded by the Lord to take off his sackcloth clothing and sandals and to walk naked and barefoot for three years. This was a prophetic sign for Ethiopia and Egypt. The king of Assyria will take away the Egyptians and Assyrians as prisoners. They will walk away naked and barefoot.

The Philistines will panic because they had been boasting about their alliances with Egypt and Ethiopia. If the king of Assyria can do this to them, what will he do to the Philistines?

Application

Over and over the Bible warns us not to trust political rulers. For Israel, the warning was not to rely on their military might or their foreign allies. For us the message is the same – do not look to human powers such as governments as our source of security.

Our hope and faith must be in Christ alone. When all around is falling, He will stand firm.

The tendency is to put our trust anywhere but in God – our possessions, our job, the government, the church. Christ is our hope. Anything else is idolatry.

This does not mean that we live in our own little bubble. No, we live in society like anyone else, but our source of peace is Christ.

Prayer

Lord forgive me for trusting in false gods which cannot save me. You alone are my salvation. Amen.

God Has A Plan For Gaza

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From Faithwire.com

‘God Has a Plan’: Former Terrorist Turned Christian Predicts Thousands in Gaza Will Come to Faith in Jesus

Joel Rosenberg on TBN/YouTube screenshot
Joel Rosenberg on TBN/YouTube screenshot
A one-time terrorist who turned to faith in Jesus in the 1990s is predicting thousands of Gazans will become Christians as the war between Hamas and Israel rages on.

The 73-year-old Taysir “Tass” Abu Saada, a former member of the Fatah terrorist group, recently told Joel Rosenberg, an American-Israeli communications strategist, he believes the war will lead many in Gaza to feel hopeless, abandoned, and lied to by Hamas, the terror group governing Gaza. As a result, he predicted they will turn from Islam and toward Christianity.

Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇

“Hamas is an ideology that is spread among many people, not only in the Gaza Strip but all over the world,” Saada explained on the “Rosenberg Report” from TBN. “However, God has a plan. And I believe the Arabs’ and the Jews’ plan is also part of that — and that is where my hope is.”

He continued, “That is why I am back in the Holy Land, to move to the Gaza Strip and take part in rebuilding. I believe, with all the destruction, with all that happened, with the hardship the Palestinians have gone through, they cannot sit back, but will ask, ‘Why?’ God is going to do a lot of work [in Gaza], and I want to be a part of that.”

 

Saada, born in Gaza, was overcome with rage toward Jewish Israelis in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967. His family moved to Saudi Arabia and Qatar when he was young and, ultimately, ran away to join Fatah and fight to support Yasser Arafat, the former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“After the Six Day War, I felt as if I was having a nervous breakdown, and my hatred just grew and grew,” Saada said in his testimony, published on jewishroots.net. “I did not understand how we could lose so many wars against Israel. We were bigger than Israel in numbers and size, we had more equipment — everything we had was more than they had, but still, we lost the wars against them.”

“I was thinking that, once again, our leaders sold us to the Jews,” he added. “That was when I decided to go and fight for our land, which I believed was ours.”

A series of events landed Saada in legal trouble that ultimately sent him to the U.S. After integrating, he married an American woman and met a Christian who led him to faith in Jesus.

The Christian man told Saada, “If you want to experience the peace of mind that I have, you have to love the Jews.” He recalled, “I completely froze and asked him how he could even think of such a — to love the Jews? He knew I hated them. For me, as for most Arabs, a good Jew was a dead Jew.”

Saada and his faith mentor read Scripture together and, the following day, the former terrorist felt an urge to pray.

“The first people that came to my heart to pray for were the Jewish people,” said Saada. “I was praying, ‘Oh, God, bless your people, Israel. God, gather them to the Promised Land.’”

The ex-terrorist told Rosenberg he believes the world is now enduring the end times.

“What we are seeing today happening is really one of the signs of the end of times, because it is not normal — the destruction that is taking place,” he told the host. “The evil hand of Hamas is attacking Israelis in a radical, very evil way. Naturally, Israel had to respond and defend itself.”

But as the destruction and horror continues, he feels a glimmer of eternal hope.

Saada said that, in time, “the harvest is going to be huge,” referring to the number of Gazans he is confident will ultimately turn to the same faith in Jesus he has found.