Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The With Us God

Image sourced here
My text is Acts 23:11
The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.’

Wouldn’t it be great if the Lord stood near you and me and said: ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome’; or, as He did on another occasion: ‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent’; or “Quick!” he said. “Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me”; or ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (see18:922:1827:23; 2Co 12:7–10). Wouldn’t it be great if God actually spoke to us as He did to Paul; that we could be so aware of His presence that we could say, as Paul does on other occasions that we sense the Lord standing next to us? What is it for God to be with us and how do we live with the presence of God? There’s a lot

Friday, August 26, 2016

Will You Come and Follow Me ?

 


Just after Easter we began our series on The Nature Of God, and since then we’ve looked at 21 aspects of God’s nature:  Love   Holiness  Mercy  Grace  Friendship  Parenthood  Justice  Faithfulness  Forgiveness  Power  Creativity  Authority  Providence  Protection  Hope   Promise Keeper    Good  Comfort  Omniscient   Omnipresent   Compassion   Healer
These characteristics also describe the Christian, particularly the Christian born again of water and Spirit (omniscience and omnipotence are of course the exceptions which prove the rule). In my introduction to the series I reminded us that we humans are created in God’s image and as such we