“Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him.”
Observation
We must not do good deeds to impress people. Instead, we should give to charity quietly and without fanfare. Do things privately and not for the accolades of men.
When we pray, we don’t do it as a show of piety. Instead we should go to a quiet place to be alone with the Father.
When we pray, we should not go on and on, as if God is impressed by our long-winded prayers. He already knows what we need before we pray.
Application
If God knows what we need before we ask Him, one night ask, “What is the point of prayer?” And if God is sovereign, then all prayer does is let God do what He was already going to do anyway.
Prayer is really for our benefits rather than God’s. When we pray, we are admitting that we cannot do anything and that we are totally dependent on God.
When we pray, we allow God’s Spirit to replace anxiety with peace, fear with expectancy.
When we pray, we do not bend God’s will to conform to our desires. We bend our desires to conform to God’s will.
When we pray, then we are offering ourselves up to God to be used by Him. I express my concerns to Him, and sometimes He tells me what I should do about them.
Above all, prayer is meant to be a two way conversation with the Lord. It is not it is not about dumping a list of demands, but listening for the for the still small voice of God’s Spirit.
Prayer
Lord, please teach me how to how to pray. Allow my prayers to become a means of deepening my friendship with you. Amen.
There are many factors at play in what has been dubbed “cancel culture”. Certainly, social media plays a role in the ways it turbocharges our outrage. But the existence of the outrage in the first place is a matter of the heart. It arises when enlightened souls feel compelled to enlighten others who are lost in the dark. It’s fundamentally an evangelistic zeal—there’s a preacher inside us all. You don’t need to be a churchgoer to feel it. Glen Scrivener
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say, ‘Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! “
Observation
Jesus continues to push home His points about addressing the state of the heart and not just obedience to the law.
So He says that the principle of eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth must give way to a new law in which we do not resist evil people. We should go further than the law demands.
Rather than loving your neighbour and hating your enemies, Jesus says we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. When we do this, we are like our Father who gives sunlight and rain to evil and good people are like. Even tax collectors are kind to their friends.
Application
There is no law in the Old Testament that says we may hate our enemies if we love our neighbours. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan to teach that we have to love people who might not be our natural friends.
Jesus tells us to do the opposite of what the world teaches and our natural inclinations want. To be a true follower of Jesus means that we learn to love people who are nasty or violent towards us.
This is hard, and in our own abilities it is impossible. But as christians we are connected to the Father, the God who is love. He will give us grace to forgive and to love our enemies
Prayer
Lord Jesus, these words are hard to accept. Please give me grace to love those who hate me. Amen.
What happened when Jesus entered the room of Jewish science student?
By Charles Gardner —
James Tour
Top scientist James Tour is described as a genius inventor who has started 78 companies and spoken at every major university in the United States.
James grew up just outside New York City, but Judaism didn’t particularly excite him. He once tried to talk to a rabbi, but was brushed aside with very little explanation.
Then he went to college where he met a number of ‘born-again Christians’. He thought it an odd term and questioned what it meant.
One fellow student drew a picture of a man on a cliff edge with God on the other side of a great chasm, trying to explain how Jesus’ death crosses – or bridges – the gap created by our sin because he bore their weight, and we just have to trust in his sacrifice for us.
But James protested: “I’m not a sinner. I never killed anyone or robbed a bank,” adding that the modern Judaism of which he was familiar never really discussed sin.
His friend countered by showing him a verse from the New Testament: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
Then came the knockout punch. His friend pointed to Jesus’ teaching on adultery: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27f)
“Pow! I felt as though I had been punched in the chest,” James explained. “I had become addicted to pornography and I didn’t think anybody knew. Now someone who lived 2,000 years ago is calling me out on it. I felt immediately convicted and I knew I was a sinner.”
He also saw how Christ’s sacrificial death had been precisely predicted by Isaiah some 700 years before it happened. For he read in Isaiah chapter 53 how the Messiah would take our sins upon himself – “the perfect God comes and gives himself for us” – adding: “We Jews know better than anyone else that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
“I started to realize how Jewish the New Testament is. It’s all around Jewish people. Then, on November 7th 1977, I was all alone in my room. I realized Yeshua was the one who died on the cross. I said, ‘Lord, I am a sinner. Please forgive me.’
“All of a sudden Jesus Christ entered my room. Yes, Jesus was in my room. I started weeping, his presence was so glorious and this amazing sense of forgiveness started to come upon me.”
His cousins were shocked at his decision and his mother was not happy either. She didn’t blame the religious leaders for killing Jesus; he got what he deserved for calling them ‘whitewashed tombs’, in her view.
But then she read the Tanach (Old Testament) from beginning to end, and told her son: “God warned us over and over again.”
Later, through the influence of James’ 15-year-old daughter, she started reading the Bible again and, one day, aged 72, she rang her son to say: “Jimmy, it hit me; the way he gave his life. I believe it now. Jesus is the Son of God.”
Tour is a professor of chemistry, professor of materials science and nanoengineering, and professor of Computer Science at Rice University. He was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine in 2013 and won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society in 2012. He was ranked one of the top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by Thomson Reuters in 2009.
More than any of his accomplishments, Tour says, “what means the most to me is that I’m a Jew who believes Jesus is the Messiah.”
James’ story can be viewed on YouTube, courtesy of One for Israel in partnership with Chosen People Ministries.
In Christianity, the Victim, Jesus, suffered redemptively and offers dignity and hope to the oppressed. The danger nowadays is that our chief desire is not to honour and help victims but to become them. Glen Scrivener
In Christianity the principle is that all sit equally at the same table. The modern goal is for all to climb equally high up their own ladders. Glen Scrivener
New Life Narrabri 