Month: March 2018

How to Get to Heaven

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pastorpete51's avatarWalking With Lambs

I am posting today’s video not to impress anyone with my teaching at the nursing home but to impress on anyone willing to go; how simple it is to share the hope of Christ in a few minutes. Jesus gave us a great commission but at nursing home it needs to be short and to the point! Please be patient with the quality of the recording as it was done by one of our recreational aides who volunteered at the last minute to run the camera.

This is a ministry that anyone who is willing can do. Your willingness to press on through difficulties, sometimes frustrating slowness in seeing responses and the sorrow of unexpected farewells can lead to a rich harvest for Jesus Christ. We are now approaching our 24th year in ministry at Allied Skilled nursing home. There are three services each week in the various wards reaching…

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Today’s Service

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In my quiet time this morning it was as if God held up a mirror to show me how little I valued those moments compared to Him. Yes I lingered for a brief prayer and spent time in His word; but all the while the wheels of my mind were sprinting ahead towards my future plans. Yet as the apostle Peter points out to us –

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter 3:8

We all too often lose the value and purpose of the moment of prayer and quiet because the hurry within our hearts drowns out the still small voice of God. We demean the intimate contentment with the Lord Jesus as if something later in the day or tomorrow or next year has more value in His eyes.

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But God delights in the moment. He rests in it as Jesus rested by the well. He has no sense of hurry or fearful anxiety of urgency.

He is never forced into action in a crisis. He rests in the moment like a butterfly who happily enjoys each flower without wishing He could hurry on to the next. He is not only the way and the truth – He is also like the clock of life itself and all time stands still in His presence. There is neither tomorrow nor yesterday with Him. He is the Great I Am! Whatever humble word, shy smile or simple sacrifice Jesus gives us for today is more precious to Him than any act of service we are planning for the future. The God who knows the beginning from the end also knows our hearts. If we will simply walk with Him by faith in this moment, His promise is that He will walk with us all down through the corridors of eternity!

 

 

Changing Seas

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If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you the night is bright as the day,.  for darkness is as light with you. Psalm 139:9-10

Maybe to you seagulls at the beach are just a nuisance and a pest. Sometimes they pass over our heads dropping little bombs of blessing or they swoop down to snatch a piece of sandwich from our hands. We usually meet them at the beach because that is where their world and our’s intersect. But their home is the constantly changing sea while ours is the land. Unlike us who pack our things and run for safety when storms approach, wind and tide do not bother them. They fly out to sea and ride out the storms calling whatever sea-shore to where they are blown their new home.

Right now whether we are approaching the dawn of a new day or the sunset of an old God offers us the same assurance He gives the gulls. When the terror of the unknown lurks like an enemy in our imaginations we need to remember, that our problems are no greater than Joseph’s when he fled for Egypt just ahead of Herod’s blood thirsty soldiers. Joseph’s faith like ours was not a guarantee of a placid life, but of God’s help in any danger. When all sorts of changes come knocking at our door today we can run for shelter or we can spread our wings like the seagulls. When we choose to trust God like them we will discover that even at the point farthest from our familiar His hand will lead us. Even when our changing seas threaten, His promise and His right hand will hold us and keep us even at the uttermost parts of the sea!

 

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