The Pastor’s Pen

I wish to encourage you all to place the loving mercy of our Lord in the forefront of your thinking as you enter this new day. As the writer of Lamentations rightly explains, in the midst of all that life throws at us, we choose to ”call to mind” the character of God. Regardless of what lays ahead of you today, your soul is safe! Your hope is grounded in the very eternal nature of our sovereign God who loves you with an everlasting, inseparable love, which intertwines His mercy with the activities and events of the day that lays before you.

Lam. 3:21-25 (ESV)  But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: (22) The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; (23) they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  (24)  “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”  (25)  The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Enter today beloved assured of our Saviours merciful truth in you. Lean upon His provision, in spite of what you may be feeling, for He will sustain your soul. Carry each other to our King in prayer, knowing that He can accomplish what we can only dream of. We walk by faith for His glory and each other’s blessing through faith in Christ.

I wish to encourage you all with what the apostle Paul recognised as a vital element of walking in the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is for us to …make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification (Romans 14:19). Three useful observations which I pray will assist you this week:

1. Walking with Christ and serving others with a genuine view to growing in unity will take your every effort. There are no shortcuts and no room for selfishness or laziness.
2. Growing Godliness is progressive. As we choose to do what leads to the benefit of others, one Christ pleasing act will lead to another, and to another, and so on.
3. One of Christ’s is  peace and mutual edification. A personal spiritual thermometer is; does the way I speak and act toward others actually build peace into their lives and constructively develop mutual edification in your relationship with that person? This should be especially true in our marriages then with others.

May the Lord enable us by His Spirit, feed us by His Word, and fulfil His will in our lives as surely as He fulfils His will in Heaven.

I want to encourage you all to walk faithful for Jesus Christ today. During the course of today’s events the enemy will try to dilute your belief in Jesus Christ, to distract you from putting Christ first in your decision making processes, and to politely neglect your fellow believer.

We are well aware of Satan’s schemes (2Co. 2:11) to distract us from Christ and to simply blend us into the crowd of worldliness, to find groups of people that will invite you to simply fit in comfortably without any of those stresses caused by pursuing a life of obedience to Jesus as Lord.

Gal. 5:14   The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Gal. 6:2     Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.

Today I ask that the Lord would allow you to see those opportunities that He has prearranged for your life. Opportunities to live the love of Christ by carrying someone’s burden in some way that the recipient would recognise that it is Jesus Christ intervening in their lives.

Live Christ Beloved, be uncompromising in His love and faithful to His truth!