Christmas

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem,saying, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." - Matthew 2:1&2

It's Christmas time again, incredible isn't it? 

Time again to ponder anew the true meaning of Christmas and acknowledge that its not about all the commercial nonsense and soppy sentimentalism we see on typical Christmas TV shows!

The Star rose in the east, that cosmic sign testifying to the birth of God the son in the flesh down here on earth, that only the wise men recognized. No one else was mindful of what really happened, thousands of years later, it seems that the vast majority are not mindful of who Jesus is or why he came to earth. He did not come 2000 years ago so we can fill our shopping baskets to overflowing he did not come so we can stuff our bellies with food, he did not come so we could give and receive gifts either.
He came to live a perfectly sinless life in all he said and did, he came to die an awful death on a cross so that our sins can be forgiven. 
The joy at Christmas relates to our amazement and wonder that the God of all glory could and would condescend to come to earth to die for sinners!
Yes we rejoice at the baby Jesus birth, but that joy is vastly overshadowed by the joy of his death, and the joy of his resurrection. 

Give Thanks

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!  - Psalm 95:2

It's thanksgiving time in the USA, yes it is true we can and should thank the Lord every day for all our blessings, but setting a special day apart is also a good idea, it's a time we can slow down from our usual fast paced lives and contemplate all that we have been blessed with in the last 12 months. Many will travel this weekend to be with family, almost everyone will stuff themselves with the traditionally deliciously roasted turkey and all the accompanying trimmings. 

Let us just spend some time thanking the Lord for everything that has happened, both the good things, the bad things and the ugly things, ultimately God's permissive will has allowed all these to come our way for our good, to be a benefit to us. 

Just in the last few weeks I have had an ongoing and persistently painful bout of shingles which I am still struggling with. How can I give thanks for shingles? When I consider that I could have had it far worse than I have endured, I can thank God for sparing me in His Grace. a few weeks ago my father died suddenly in South Africa, how can I thank the Lord for that? He died peacefully in his home, which is on a farm in a rural area which he loved dearly. I thank the Lord for the incredible peace he gave me in my heart on hearing of his death, I thank the Lord for the strength he gave me to preach the Gospel at my fathers funeral. I thank The Lord for the family I grew up in, the friends and family that gave me support, and prayed for me all the way to South Africa and back to the USA.

This devotion has been of a very personal nature, but I have learnt, or rather been reminded that giving thanks really is possible in every situation and in every circumstance imaginable, I hope my sharing will encourage everyone to thank the Lord for His many blessings.

"give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Who can ever forget?

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.  - Isaiah 49:15

I very recently and rather embarrassingly forgot an appointment that I had with a brother, thinking back in my life to the first time I forgot to do something like that,  was back in Grade Three (Standard One, in South Africa in 1971). What I forgot caused considerable public embarrassment to myself, and a great deal of anger from the School Headmaster, a certain Mr Doug Sumner. It was my turn, and it was my first turn ever to read the Bible passage at the School assembly time in the morning. When he called for me to go forward to read, I realized I had not prepared and I had failed to bring the reading with me. 
I'm so glad the Bible tells us most re-assuredly that our great God cannot and will never forget us, there are not many things that the Lord cannot do, one of them is He cannot forget His family, He cannot forget His children, He died for us, how could He forget?
When you are having a black spot, a dark time spiritually, when you feel you are in a dry and dusty desert place in your spiritual life, and when you feel lonely, deserted and even when you may feel unloved and forgotten, remember this passage, there is One who knows, and whom cannot forget! What a great comfort. May the Lord truly be your comfort today!

Refreshing service.

I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people. - 1 Corinthians 16: 17-18 

Paul gives us the names of three people that were important to the work of the Gospel, and he compliments them tremendously for all they have done and were doing. He does not list any actual work but states that they themselves were a great refreshing influence to himself and the church. 

Just think about that for a moment, what we do to serve the Lord in Church is very important, but what is more important is what kind of person you are when you serve. 

Are you a reluctant servant that has to be begged and pleaded with? Do you serve with utmost reluctance and constant complaining, griping, and are you always treading on everyone else's toes, or is it always they who are treading on yours? 

Is your area of service your pet project, your little empire? In short are you a drain on everyone else? 

Or are you refreshing to those that you work with, with your fellow servants, is your service and outflowing of gratitude for the sheer pleasure of serving the ultimate Servant -Savior? Is our service done in love, compassion, gratitude and with thanksgiving? 

The unborn!

Psalm 139: 13-15
For you formed my inward parts; 
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Wonderful are your works; 
my soul knows it very well. 
My frame was not hidden from you, 
when I was being made in secret, 
intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 

How shamefully millions of unborn babies are treated, the inhumanity, the indifference of so many so called modern societies. Then compare these societies to the Eternal Word of the Living God, the Creator of the universe. What does God have to say to modern man about the unborn?
He is the one forming us already while we are in the womb. We are a work of art to God in our mothers womb, as tiny as an unborn baby can be, the baby is a masterpiece of creation, the mystery and the wonder of the growth of the unborn.
Surely the Lord sees every unborn baby, He sees he knows their names, he knows them not as a disinterested observer, but knows their very soul, He knows everything about them, and yes God loves them! 
Jesus died for every unborn child as much as he died for anyone else. Amazing love, how can it be?
Yet it is, God loves every mother who bears a child, and every child that is being carried by its mother. The Lord is loving and protective, how unwise are those murderers who plot and carry our a genocide everyday, oh, how terrible is God's wrath going to be to them on judgement day. His love and tender mercy will be equally and oppositely wonderfully gracious to all unborn children who are taken from this world before their time.
Mothers do not fret about the baby in your in your womb, the Living God has His eye on you and your future son or daughter! Our God is gracious, merciful and tender-fully loving in all His ways, place your trust in Him, and in Him alone.

A willingness to listen.

Ezekiel 3:4-11 NIV
[4] 4 He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. [5] You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel--- [6] not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. [7] But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. [8] But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. [9] I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people. ” [10] And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. [11] Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says ,’ whether they listen or fail to listen .”

God has placed us in the country that we live in, He has placed us where He wants us to be, and our task is the same as Ezekiel, to go and speak the Word of God to our own people. These people speak the same language, the same dialect, the same idiom as ourselves. So why is it so difficult to get through to them? It is simple, they are actually unwilling to hear what God has to say to them, in fact people naturally, due to sinful natures do not want to hear God out!
What is the solution, we who are His servants by grace, have to become as equally persevering in our efforts to communicate the Word as the world is stubbornly resisting God's Word! 
Our part is to not give up trying, the Lord will do His part, only He can break down a lost sinners stubborn heart to the point that they can hear Him speak. We must go and do as we have been told and must leave the results to our Lord.

Sheep

Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.  - Psalm 100:3

It is a wonderful grace to know that the Lord is indeed God, God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth and everything in it.

He made us, we are not a product of random actions, we were created by our Lord, we belong to Him, he made us, he bought and paid for us, he paid the price in full for our sinfulness. We are his sheep, the unworthy objects of his eternal loving protectiveness!

The Revenge of the Guava!

It wasn’t all doom and gloom between My sister and I, well mostly it was but not all the time, one of my happiest memories involved her and a friend of ours and I going berserk in a small neglected guava plantation on the farm. That day we really did discover the true purpose and correct use for Guavas.

This small patch of Guava trees had long been neglected or forgotten by the man who owned the farm and it bordered the back portion of our property, we had up to now avoided it, but on that day we ventured in and seeing a mass of rotting guavas on the ground we picked them up and began throwing them at each other, now realize this they were rotting and really stank, I mean really badly, they were also really soft and when the said projectile, the rotten guva hit its target it broke up completely leaving the victim in a real mess, we played for what seemed an age until our steam ran out, when my mother came out of the house to see what the commotion was all about she was horrified that we had wasted all that fruit, it was a while before she actually listened to our explanation and eventually she saw the funny side, but would not let us into the house before she had thoroughly hosed us down with our garden hose-pipe.

 I cannot fail in my duty to add a cautionary note to this story, it is a little know fact, perhaps up to now I have been the only person to come to this momentous discovery, that Guavas have a long memory and can be vindictive, yes its true they had their revenge on me, I was visiting a friend and they like so many people had a really nice guava tree in the garden, the guavas on this particular tree were quite simple the biggest and best looking I had ever seen before, and that is saying something as they are very common in Zululand and we did have a small plantation near our back yard. We all began eating guavas we had picked, the tree was heaving with an abundance of them. I was halfway through mine as we stood chatting and eating when I looked for the first time at what I was eating and to my horror saw it was absolutely infested with worms. Eating such a soft fruit the texture and taste of the worms were impossible to detect, I can tell you it took me years before I could eat one again, and I am not talking about the worms.

The Smell of Home

 I grew up along the east coast of the republic of South Africa The smell of the warm sea, the Indian Ocean to be more precise is unforgettable,  not being a marine expert, but when you approach the beach and the warm and humid air hits you with a bit of the salt spray it’s tremendous, I always feel as if I’m on holiday when whether I’m ankle  knee or waist deep in the sea waters, and after taking a few tumbles in its strong currents and feeling the salt water work its way through the nostrils may be unpleasant, but one still feels affection for the experience.

The vast fields of sugar-cane one sees as you travel the length of the Natal coastline, on a windy day from afar the leaves move in waves just like one large grassy ocean, and the sweet smell of unrefined sugar one gets as you approach the plantations is such a familiar smell to me, it’s the smell of home. 

Our living water

He made streams come out of the rock 
and caused waters to flow down like rivers.  - Psalm 78:16

Think of being in a desert, a place with no access to water of any kind. Think how important finding water in order to survive would be, we would become obsessed with water. Think about the fact that outside of Christ we are spiritually dead, we are nothing more than dry bones in a very dry desert. 
Jesus is the living water, He is the stream of life giving water, our thirst is for Him, only He can satisfy our thirst, even in the deserts of life, places where there is no water, Jesus can cause water to flow from out of the rock, He can do the impossible. He has done the impossible for us already, He rose from the dead. His resurrection proves He can bring life giving water, he can bring, he can give new life to the dead. 

The Lord and the womb.

Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.  - Psalm 71:6
A great reminder that God recognizes us even in our mothers's womb, We have leaned on Him, even when we were in the womb He was protecting and sustaining us. Life begins in the womb, it matters not that laws on this earth fail to recognize life in the womb. God, the Creator of the universe created human life on the sixth day. He knows when and where life begins for each individual. He also knows when our lives end, precious is the blood of His saints. All life is precious to our God, be it life in or outside of the womb.
Even our birth, our survival in the womb and entrance into this world depends on the Lord. He brought us out of the womb, He brings all of us out of the womb, He i the one who extends our lives, everyday we live, we live by His grace. 

Praise Him for every day, praise Him for new life, for extending our lives, praise Him, now and always!


Pastor Gary Morrison
Trinity Baptist Church
www.trinityallentown.org

The Lord hears our Prayers!

O you who hear prayer, to you shall all flesh come.  - Psalm 65:2

Yes God, the Lord the Creator, our Lord Jesus Christ who sits on the right hand of God the Father, it is he who hears all prayer! 
Jesus hears, He is not dead and buried, He is alive, He is the Eternal One, the God who hears the cries of His loved ones, He who listens, even when we are alone in darkness, abandoned, deserted, abused, forsaken, forgotten by all, neglected, depressed, even when we are persecuted with impunity to death, Jesus hears our cry. Oh what comfort, though no one responds to our distress, He hears our prayer, our voice, He sees our need, our desperate plight. Truly we come to Him, we draw near to Him in prayer.
I wonder if we truly appreciate what a God-given resource we have at our disposal, I wonder if we realize what privilege we have been given?
"Oh Lord, you see us where we are, you see us as we are, you see beneath the facade, you see our heart, our lostness, our brokenness, you see and you hear!
May your name be praised now and forever more, Amen!"
Draw near to Him in prayer.
May He bless us in the days that lie ahead with a stronger sense of His very real presence with us at all times.

Waiting

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.  - Psalm 62:1

In God, and in God alone, and in no other, and in nothing else can our souls, our inner most being, that which we are inside ourselves, only in the Lord God alone can our souls commune. 
Apart from Christ our inner most being is actually spiritually dead, dead souls are like dead people, and dead people just simply do not communicate at all, they don't communicate, because they cannot, they are dead. 
Once the Lord comes and breathes His Holy Spirit over us and on us our souls come to life, and immediately like newborn babies who wait for their mothers, we wait for our heavenly Father! 
Our very salvation comes from God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God brings His salvation to us in a more certain way than a mother feeds her newborn baby. God's care for us, his newborn children is more loving and caring than the most loving parent could ever possibly be. 
That may be hard to grasp for some, but it is meant as an encouragement, and assurance, a comfort.  
We need never fear the Lord and His love for us. 

Our great refuge!

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  - Psalm 46:1

 The Scripture makes very clear to us in this verse, that God, our God, the Lord, the Creator of the universe, he alone is where we find refuge!

Refuge from our guilt, our sin, our inner struggle, our weaknesses, we can flee to him for refuge, for safety for comfort for consolation.

Our God will have compassion on us when we turn to him for help. He will keep us safe, he will keep our souls safe and secure, in him we are all refugees looking to him for sanctuary. We go to him and plead for asylum from the tyranny of our own transgressions. 

God gives us all the strength we need, in our weakness he is strong, we have no strength but for him, and him alone, and oh what a Savior, He rescues us when we are in the direst trouble, when we were at our worst, when we are beyond help and hope, he came to help us.

May he be our comfort and our rest,

in Jesus name, Amen!

Where does joy come from?

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, 
nor fruit be on the vines, 
the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, 
the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.  - Habakkuk 3:17-18


Rejoice in the Lord no matter what your circumstances are, our joy is in Him, not in what we have. 

Our joy is in the Lord and in what he has done for us in Christ Jesus!

http://allgraceblog.blogspot.com/

The resurrection of Jesus

God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Acts 2:24

Hallelujah for the resurrection of Jesus, it was impossible for death to keep Jesus in the grave, to keep him in its grip!
God the Father did the impossible, he raised Jesus to life again, thereby vindicating the perfect righteousness and sinlessness of Jesus life. Jesus who never sinned could not be killed either, he gave up his life! He took our sin upon himself and suffered death in our place, so that we by God's grace could be forgiven!
The resurrection of Jesus forever silences his all his critics, whatever anyone ever says about Jesus that contradicts what Jesus says about himself, must be submitted to the acid test, surely the one resurrected is the one God the Father has accepted as true and faithful. Jesus is the way the truth and the life!

May we all continue to rejoice in the resurrection everyday of the year!

Pastor Gary Morrison

The death of Christ.

Luke 23:44 
It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!”48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. 49 And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

Its Easter time again, its that time of year we celebrate the Supreme Sacrifice of God the Son for the forgiveness of our sins. 
This season is actually more important, more holy to us than Christmas is! Yes the world has much more emphasis on Christmas, and the true meaning of Christ's coming to earth gets lost behind a flurry of gift giving and receiving.
At Easter there is no hiding, not even the chocolate eggs can obscure the terrible price God Himself paid for our sin, this was the great day of reckoning, a supreme demonstration of the self-sacrificial love of our God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, as the Lord Jesus stepped into the breach. 
Yes not only the supreme demonstration of love, but also God's supreme demonstration of His Holy wrath against sin! He did not spare His Son the torment of taking sin upon himself and paying the price for our redemption in His death. God's Holy hatred of sin was punished to the full extent that His infallible law and His righteousness demanded. 
What the Roman Centurion said what was absolutely true about Jesus, he had seen many people die in all kinds of ways as a soldier of the Empire. In Jesus however he saw someone die as he had never seen before, the manner of Jesus' death made  huge impression on him, yes Jesus was innocent, he even died the death of an innocent.
What impression, what impact will the death of Jesus have on you over this period of time, if it is not life changing, then pray to God that he will still have mercy!
He is a merciful God, not willing that any should perish in their sin!

The Lord is my Shepherd

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.  
Psalms 23:1
A passage we all know very well, and it is a text that is very comforting to us when we hear it.
The Lord God, Creator of the Universe and everything in it, God All-powerful, Omni-potent, and he desires us to see His as a Shepherd, as our shepherd.
Being a Shepherd is and was never was a very glamorous job, in fact it cannot even be described as a desirable job by any stretch of the imagination. Sheep have a predisposition to scatter, to wander off on their own and get into trouble or danger, to get separated from the rest of the flock, to get tangled up in overhanging branches or bushes. Sheep need constant watching, it is a 24 hour job, and thankless task, and dangerous job, and one with little reward for the shepherd. A shepherd is not a harsh dictator, a merciless tyrant, and unfeeling master. A shepherd gives names to all his sheep and knows each one and calls each one by name, a shepherd speaks gently and softly to the sheep under his care, a shepherd does not hesitate to place himself in danger in order to protect his flock from any harm. A shepherd leads from the front, waking out ahead of and guiding his sheep to pleasant pastures and a good supply of fresh water. A shepherd takes care of the needs of his sheep.
Jesus is our good Shepherd, he knows us each by name, he calls us to himself, he has gone on ahead of us, and He has laid down his life for us. He saved us from our sin, and from the consequences of that sin, which is death and eternal separation from God. Jesus has provided full and final salvation for us. 

Is Jesus your Shepherd?

May he lead and guide you from this day forward as your ever loving Shepherd