Post by JEM on Jan 28, 2008 2:56:42 GMT
A Message of Hope for the YEAR OF HOPE 2008
« Thread Started on Jan 9, 2008, 12:41am »
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The message of Christmas is that the long-promised Messiah, Jesus Christ, the “anointed one” had finally come into the world. As described in Revelation 19:16, Jesus is the “King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.” Quite simply, He is above all kings and all lords throughout the earth. As the Son, second person of the Triune God, everything is in His hands as He rules the earth. He is almighty and all-powerful.
“God installed Him as “King on Zion” as He sent Him into the world to be my Savior who would restore mankind’s relationship with God. God had every right to install Him as one would expect a mighty King to be installed: with trumpets blazing, on a throne of gold and silver, with many servants tending to His every need in a beautiful palace in the most beautiful countryside in the world.
“Instead, God installed Him as a baby to be born to a virgin girl by the name of Mary, who was in her teens. She and her fiancé Joseph had come to register in Bethlehem, his ancestral home, as required by a decree of Caesar Augustus that a census of Roman territory be taken. There was no inn that had room to take them, so they stayed overnight in a stable. Jesus would be born there and placed in a manger, a place where cattle would feed. It was the greatest miracle of all history! Oh, what a lowly birth, for our King who means everything to us!
“God does as He pleases as Isaiah tells us in Chapter 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” But His way for our salvation, Jesus Christ, is the only way. There is no way for us to earn salvation by ourselves because of our sin. All of us who have taken refuge in Him are truly blessed.”
Because God's ways differ from ours, and his timing fits the plans He has set out, things that to us look like set backs have a reason we cannot see nor understand, but we have to go on trusting that He is in charge.
I became a Deacon in 1976, and in that first year it became apparent that I should serve as Church Treasurer for the next 6 years, and that led into the provisioning, funding, creation and setting up of a Boy's Brigade Company, and the expansion of mission support. All that flowed because David a young man in his mid 30's who was a Deacon and whose final year I served, had been called into ministerial training,
This opened the way for me to be moved into position by God, and other people with BB experience to be moved into position as Deacons too.
Yet in less than a year of starting college David died of a heart attack. Why did God call him to do that only to let him die? It is true that his action made other young people think and commit themselves to Christ, and the memorial tapestry placed in his memory in the Northern College inspired lots of other young students.
Was he taken out by "ennemy action" for we are all involved in a battle with hostile forces determined to oppose the extension of God's Kingdom? Or in the "Spirit world - Heaven" has he a more important role to play than here?
The same applies to another young man here,. who was one of the best St John Ambulance Brigade cadets Walden ever produced.and Jack Turnbull as a senior officer was very proud of him. He became a Church member, was baptised, transfered to a Cambridge Church from where he responded to a call for ministerial training and was studying in London. In his first term he was knocked down by a car on a pedestrain crossing and killed. Why?
My first girl friend, A fine young teacher trainee from Erith in Kent studying at college in Walden, a fine Christian, went to Canada for her Easter holiday and died of a heart attack. Why? One of my recent friends aged 43 studying in America to be a minister of the Lutheran Church just about to complete his internship and go to a pastorate, who 4 years ago set up a new American mission to Africa died suddenly in May shocking so many people. Why? True that in his case his sister is continuing the work he began and support for it is growing.
It is all very puzzling but He who "sees the big picture" has a reason for allowing it and perhaps what happens to His servants is necessary to answer someone else's need or prayer.
I am reminded of the WEC Gospel Literature Worldwide programme that produced the gospel broadsheets ministry = Bientot, Soon, Cedo, Pronto, De Weg, with Russian, Arabic and Swahili editions and others. Millions of papers, hundreds of thousands of Bible students, thousands of Readers Clubs, hundreds of congregations, scores of churches, and pastors, have developed from that ministry.
It all began because one missionary to Africa was invalided home unable to return and began writing letters to his former groups in Africa, answering their questions, giving teaching and encouragement, and they copied them by hand and sent them to other groups and so on.
If any of us suffer it can provide us an insight or make us sensitive in some deeper way to other people facing similar problems that will enable us to be God's answer to their needs.
I can think back to periods when I was immobile for weeks with my legs, and later with thrombosis, when it looked as though the end of the road had come, Those times were painful and inconvenient but I am still here years later, alive, mobile, active, and reaching new people in new ways.
2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Overseas Evangelism Auxillary formed in 1958 when our local Baptist Young Peoples Fellowship, and Youth For Christ Committee began sending things overseas. Locally we organised rallies, and outings, a bookstall and library ministry, a Scripture Union branch, door to door literature distribution, and gospel bill board posters. From that work begun in 1954 we have reached 24,000 people in the UK.
In 1958 we began sending magazines to Missionaries, later it spread to nationals in many countries and extended to many other forms of printed, illustrated, visual, audio and on-line communications.
From 1958 we have reached about 40 under 20.000 people scattered across 191 other countries and each week we reach a few more new ones, while some we reached long ago are reaching more and more themselves.
Our numbers are greatly depleted, some have passed on, the rest are in our 70's-90's but there are still new opportunities to follow.
Last month we collected hundreds of postcards locally to pass on to MAF who sell them to help keep their aircraft in the air. But the backs of about 200 having been glued into scrapbooks were too damaged to be saleable. Today I have produced the first of a set of tracts that can be glued onto the backs, and also put onto greeting cards. These will then be mailed to a Christian Resource Centre in Malawi to where we have already sent Bibles, gospels, books, posters, tracts,cassettes, all of which are much appreciated. Through this centre we were last year able to get Shona Bibles to 15 pastors of new congregatiions in Mozambique and we are trying at present to get the Bible Society of Zambia's help to get 70 Good News Bibles to Nchelenge to be used on the islands on Lake Mweru.
Back in the mid 1990's, just after the fall of the USSR, I encountered a young university student, one of a group of 3, natives of the Ukraine working in Greece and Turkey in the holidays. I supplied a Bible to begin with. I have kept in touch. He became a Christian and I have kept him supplied with Bible study material, teaching material, books on prayer, magazines, He is a surveyer, architect and artist. I'd not heard of him for 18 months. I thought him dead as he suffers much from arthritis and rheumatism and the cold. For months in the winter of 2005 he was home ill and read through the Bible in 4 languages. Turns out he fell from scaffolding and severely injured his arm. He sent me a lovely water colour for Christmas which he is going to paint in oils as a mural in his local church for which he has already painted other murals.
Keep plodding on, Keep trusting, praying, learning, Keep cheerful and focussed. God has great things yet for you to do when He has finished preparing you for them. Even if you tried to do them now you would probably fail as God is not ready yet, but He will include you and involve you when He is ready.
Meanwhile your present trials may involve you with people for whom meeting you may be significant for them in God's plan for their lives. It is not how many we reach that matters but just that one here and there being helped, may go on to do great things of which we may never know.
Be encourged and plod on, go forward with hope into this new year
Remember the words of George Windsor, King of the UK 1936-1952 that he quoted in the early days of the Second World War
in his Christmas Message to the Country and the Commonwealth
quoting words of M Louise Haskins
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown"
and he replied
"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way".
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« Thread Started on Jan 9, 2008, 12:41am »
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The message of Christmas is that the long-promised Messiah, Jesus Christ, the “anointed one” had finally come into the world. As described in Revelation 19:16, Jesus is the “King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.” Quite simply, He is above all kings and all lords throughout the earth. As the Son, second person of the Triune God, everything is in His hands as He rules the earth. He is almighty and all-powerful.
“God installed Him as “King on Zion” as He sent Him into the world to be my Savior who would restore mankind’s relationship with God. God had every right to install Him as one would expect a mighty King to be installed: with trumpets blazing, on a throne of gold and silver, with many servants tending to His every need in a beautiful palace in the most beautiful countryside in the world.
“Instead, God installed Him as a baby to be born to a virgin girl by the name of Mary, who was in her teens. She and her fiancé Joseph had come to register in Bethlehem, his ancestral home, as required by a decree of Caesar Augustus that a census of Roman territory be taken. There was no inn that had room to take them, so they stayed overnight in a stable. Jesus would be born there and placed in a manger, a place where cattle would feed. It was the greatest miracle of all history! Oh, what a lowly birth, for our King who means everything to us!
“God does as He pleases as Isaiah tells us in Chapter 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” But His way for our salvation, Jesus Christ, is the only way. There is no way for us to earn salvation by ourselves because of our sin. All of us who have taken refuge in Him are truly blessed.”
Because God's ways differ from ours, and his timing fits the plans He has set out, things that to us look like set backs have a reason we cannot see nor understand, but we have to go on trusting that He is in charge.
I became a Deacon in 1976, and in that first year it became apparent that I should serve as Church Treasurer for the next 6 years, and that led into the provisioning, funding, creation and setting up of a Boy's Brigade Company, and the expansion of mission support. All that flowed because David a young man in his mid 30's who was a Deacon and whose final year I served, had been called into ministerial training,
This opened the way for me to be moved into position by God, and other people with BB experience to be moved into position as Deacons too.
Yet in less than a year of starting college David died of a heart attack. Why did God call him to do that only to let him die? It is true that his action made other young people think and commit themselves to Christ, and the memorial tapestry placed in his memory in the Northern College inspired lots of other young students.
Was he taken out by "ennemy action" for we are all involved in a battle with hostile forces determined to oppose the extension of God's Kingdom? Or in the "Spirit world - Heaven" has he a more important role to play than here?
The same applies to another young man here,. who was one of the best St John Ambulance Brigade cadets Walden ever produced.and Jack Turnbull as a senior officer was very proud of him. He became a Church member, was baptised, transfered to a Cambridge Church from where he responded to a call for ministerial training and was studying in London. In his first term he was knocked down by a car on a pedestrain crossing and killed. Why?
My first girl friend, A fine young teacher trainee from Erith in Kent studying at college in Walden, a fine Christian, went to Canada for her Easter holiday and died of a heart attack. Why? One of my recent friends aged 43 studying in America to be a minister of the Lutheran Church just about to complete his internship and go to a pastorate, who 4 years ago set up a new American mission to Africa died suddenly in May shocking so many people. Why? True that in his case his sister is continuing the work he began and support for it is growing.
It is all very puzzling but He who "sees the big picture" has a reason for allowing it and perhaps what happens to His servants is necessary to answer someone else's need or prayer.
I am reminded of the WEC Gospel Literature Worldwide programme that produced the gospel broadsheets ministry = Bientot, Soon, Cedo, Pronto, De Weg, with Russian, Arabic and Swahili editions and others. Millions of papers, hundreds of thousands of Bible students, thousands of Readers Clubs, hundreds of congregations, scores of churches, and pastors, have developed from that ministry.
It all began because one missionary to Africa was invalided home unable to return and began writing letters to his former groups in Africa, answering their questions, giving teaching and encouragement, and they copied them by hand and sent them to other groups and so on.
If any of us suffer it can provide us an insight or make us sensitive in some deeper way to other people facing similar problems that will enable us to be God's answer to their needs.
I can think back to periods when I was immobile for weeks with my legs, and later with thrombosis, when it looked as though the end of the road had come, Those times were painful and inconvenient but I am still here years later, alive, mobile, active, and reaching new people in new ways.
2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Overseas Evangelism Auxillary formed in 1958 when our local Baptist Young Peoples Fellowship, and Youth For Christ Committee began sending things overseas. Locally we organised rallies, and outings, a bookstall and library ministry, a Scripture Union branch, door to door literature distribution, and gospel bill board posters. From that work begun in 1954 we have reached 24,000 people in the UK.
In 1958 we began sending magazines to Missionaries, later it spread to nationals in many countries and extended to many other forms of printed, illustrated, visual, audio and on-line communications.
From 1958 we have reached about 40 under 20.000 people scattered across 191 other countries and each week we reach a few more new ones, while some we reached long ago are reaching more and more themselves.
Our numbers are greatly depleted, some have passed on, the rest are in our 70's-90's but there are still new opportunities to follow.
Last month we collected hundreds of postcards locally to pass on to MAF who sell them to help keep their aircraft in the air. But the backs of about 200 having been glued into scrapbooks were too damaged to be saleable. Today I have produced the first of a set of tracts that can be glued onto the backs, and also put onto greeting cards. These will then be mailed to a Christian Resource Centre in Malawi to where we have already sent Bibles, gospels, books, posters, tracts,cassettes, all of which are much appreciated. Through this centre we were last year able to get Shona Bibles to 15 pastors of new congregatiions in Mozambique and we are trying at present to get the Bible Society of Zambia's help to get 70 Good News Bibles to Nchelenge to be used on the islands on Lake Mweru.
Back in the mid 1990's, just after the fall of the USSR, I encountered a young university student, one of a group of 3, natives of the Ukraine working in Greece and Turkey in the holidays. I supplied a Bible to begin with. I have kept in touch. He became a Christian and I have kept him supplied with Bible study material, teaching material, books on prayer, magazines, He is a surveyer, architect and artist. I'd not heard of him for 18 months. I thought him dead as he suffers much from arthritis and rheumatism and the cold. For months in the winter of 2005 he was home ill and read through the Bible in 4 languages. Turns out he fell from scaffolding and severely injured his arm. He sent me a lovely water colour for Christmas which he is going to paint in oils as a mural in his local church for which he has already painted other murals.
Keep plodding on, Keep trusting, praying, learning, Keep cheerful and focussed. God has great things yet for you to do when He has finished preparing you for them. Even if you tried to do them now you would probably fail as God is not ready yet, but He will include you and involve you when He is ready.
Meanwhile your present trials may involve you with people for whom meeting you may be significant for them in God's plan for their lives. It is not how many we reach that matters but just that one here and there being helped, may go on to do great things of which we may never know.
Be encourged and plod on, go forward with hope into this new year
Remember the words of George Windsor, King of the UK 1936-1952 that he quoted in the early days of the Second World War
in his Christmas Message to the Country and the Commonwealth
quoting words of M Louise Haskins
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown"
and he replied
"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way".
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