THE LORD IS WORTHY TO BE PRAISED

The Lord Jesus is wonderful beyond description. He is majestic and full of glory. He shines brighter than the sun. 

He is worthy of adulation, adoration, exaltation, exultation and worship. 

He, the Son of God, undertook to save men from their sins and the damnation that was to follow. 

He alone paid the exeedingly costly  price of His blood being poured out on a cross. There is no other way to God except through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

He is high and lifted up at the apex of all existence.

Praise and honor to His name.

Amen.

THE MERCY AND GRACE OF OUR LORD

The Lord Jesus Christ is our shepard.  He makes us like down in green pastures. He leads us besides still waters. He restores our soul.

He forgives us and cleanses us from unrighteousness. He remembers we are but dust.

He hold our hand so that when we fall, we do not fall headlong. The righteous stumble seven times but they rise up again. 

The Lord calls us back into His service and teaches us the ways to be overcomers.

Praise and honor to His name.

Amen.

 THE JOY OF THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH

The Lord of our salvation gives us two welcoming gifts when we are born into His kingdom. The gift of peace that passes all understanding and the gift of joy that is our strength.

The peace that He gives us truly is beyond understanding. In a place in the center of your heart and soul is a strange zone that you don't even realize that it is an area of turbulence. 

The Lord Jesus, who  has one royal title of " Prince of Peace", places His peace in your heart and calms a storm you didn't even know was raging.  You suddenly find a stillness deep inside that is indescribable to any person who has not experienced it. It is like explaining music to a person born deaf. 

The other gift is joy. This gift seems to bubble out of experience with the Lord. When you encounter Him and grasp how immediate and how personal He is, you find joying welling up in your heart almost as an involuntary response to His drawing near to you.

For these two wonderful gifts, give thanks to the Lord. 

If you have not experienced these two things, the Lord will save you first by your belief in Him and your belief that He died on a cross to pay for your sins.

The Lord will save you and from there, peace and joy.

Amen.

HOW OUR LORD SAVES US

We all  know we are not in good standing with our creator.

We know that we are lost and heading to darkness and damnation.

We can't help but feel that there is something wrong and that there must be something we can do but we never can figure it out. Most of the time, we just put it out of our minds and occupy ourselves with busy activities to distract us. 

Sometimes, we medicate ourselves to numb that nagging feeling that constantly gnaws at our hearts.

That feeling will never go away as long as we live. It is our human condition of being separate from God and trying to make do in a world system that does not seem made for us. 

The sensitivities of our hearts to the cruelties and absurdities  of our world are a hint that there is a mismatch between our world system and  our hearts.

The good news is that the God who made us has paid the price to redeem us from this fallen world and into the kingdom of light.

This good news is designed to work in a straightforward way:  We hear the good news that we have a redeemer who paid the costly price for us to cover our condemnation. 

We, by hearing this news, then believe the words and because these words are the very power of God unto salvation, find ourselves transformed into children of God. Things that we have never felt before, like true peace, suddenly fill our hearts and we become new creations in Jesus.

This is the only way we can be saved. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us and paid for us to move from condemnation to righteousness.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR PROTECTOR

The God of heaven is our defender. He is our shield and our rock. He is the steadfast guardian of His flock of His believers.

He scatters our enemies and fends off those who attack us.

He strengthens us and prepares us to have courage.

He alerts us to the movements of our adversaries and teaches our hand to fight and our fingers to war.

The Lord is a great and mighty monarch. He is enthroned above every other throne. 

His kingdom is a kingdom of righteousness. 

There is none like Him.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS WISE

The Lord our God is from everlasting to everlasting. 

There is nothing that can escape His notice. He knows when every sparrow falls. 

In His knowledge of all things, the Lord works in wisdom to perform His purposes. 

He undertakes insurmountable tasks ( like the salvation of men ) and devises plans to accomplish them. For example, He, being  perfect and loving, incorporated plans of great sacrifice of Himself by dying on a cross to accomplish His goal which was to save those He loves.

This daunting sacrifice of His life made possible the gift of redemption  which He offers to all men. All that we have to do is to be humble and believe in His gift of sacrifice and accept His matchless gift. 

This offer by God is wonderful news to to those who are repentant of their sins and is the power of salvation to those who believe.

The bible admonishes us not to overlook so great a salvation for there is no other way under heaven that the souls of mankind might be saved.

Amen.

 

THE LORD OUR GOD IS MERCIFUL

The Lord our God is merciful.

 He knows that we are but dust. He remembers  that we are but a vapour.

We are insufficient and we only gain sufficiency in our Lord and our God.

Thank Him for His mercy and grace.

THE LORD JESUS IS OUR ONLY HOPE

We humans are under the dominion of darkness. We are consigned to darkness because we, as a race, forfeited our sovereign position of leadership we were give over the earth.

The Lord our God, not willing to lose any of us, provided a way for salvation through the suffering and death of His only Son, Jesus. 

The death He underwent secured for us who believe a reprieve from our sentence of darkness. His subsequent resurrection granted us a chance to rise with Him into His kingdom of righteousness. 

Without this hope, we are doomed to existing in eternal darkness forever. This is not the environment we were made for. We were made for light and love and hope and life. For creatures like us, living eternally in a realm of darkness, hate, doom and death would be an unbearable existence.

The Lord Jesus paid the high price for us and is willing to save all those who call upon Him  asking for salvation from an eternity in darkness. 

He will not overlook the request of a humble heart. 

Amen.

BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.

The name of the Lord is greatly to be praised.

 The name of the Lord is like a strong tower. 

The name of the Lord is the only name given by which we might be saved.

Call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.

Amen.

THE LORD OUR GOD IS A MIGHTY WARRIOR

The Lord our God is mighty. He is strong and unconquerable.

He fights against darkness and evil and injustice and cruelty. He is strong to defend the weak and the helpless.

He is their defender.

He teaches His people to fight against the forces of malice and rebellion and He replaces evil with good. 

Bless His holy name.

THE LORD OUR PROVIDER.

The Lord Jesus is the good shepard. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

He know when every sparrow falls. He knows what you have need of before you ask.

He is patient. He is kind. He keeps no record of wrong. He bears all things and forgives all things. He always protects. He always trusts.

His ways are ways of righteousness and all his paths are peace.

Wait upon the Lord and He will give you wings like eagles. You will run and not grow weary. You will walk and not faint.

Amen.

THE LORD IS OUR FORTRESS

The Lord Jesus is our fortress. He is our salvation. We who trust in Him run to Him and we are safe.

He is strong and He is mighty. Praise and honor to the Lord our God.

He is the perfect and only  Son of God who reigns forever and of His kingdom there shall be no end.

OUR GOD WHO SAVES

The very God who made us, knew that our free nature would lead us into a state of rebellion against Him.

Yet He wanted free people who could, as free entities, willingly choose the path of God.

Having chosen the life of rebellion, it is not easy to turn against our intrinsic nature and live a live of abandon to God. In fact, everything in us and around us works very hard to keep us in a perpetual state of enmity with God.

But the Lord is a capable shepard and is well able to provide all that is needed to guide His people to the knowledge of His salvation and persuade them that they want a relationship with God rather than with the king of darkness.

The darkness tries to disguise itself as a kingdom of light and  it clothes itself with promises of pleasure.

We live for a while in this realm and for some of us, the Lord lets us see the shallow futility of living selfishly and engaging in deeds approved by the agents of darkness. We know that we must find away out before we are engulfed in the miasma of savagery and mediocrity.

It is at precisely this time that a sliver of the gospel is offered to us and we are awakened to the possibility of redemption from our evil ways and our evil fate.

The Lord God is good. He has paid the costly price to redeem you. He is presenting the offer of the free gift of salvation.  

Accept this gift and be saved.

OUR LORD AS SERVANT

The Lord Jesus, to whom all authority and power over heaven and earth and over all men was given, modelled the life of a servant. 

He ministered to the poor and the sick. He washed the feet of His disciples to set the bar of service to each other.

The Lord wants  all subjects of His kingdom  to serve one another. The standard is clear: those who would be great in His kingdom would be servant of all. 

THE EXTRAORDINARY SAVIOUR

The Lord Jesus Christ is the superlative saviour. He is majestic and magnificent and awesome.

He willingly undertook to bear the sins of all mankind by surrendering to the Roman soldiers and then enduring a brutal physical penalty and then an excrutiating death on a cross. 

He undertook the death on the cross that we may have life but He also undertook the physical torture so that we could live healthy and be healed by His stripes. 

Further to that, in rising from the dead, He secured our resurrection and then when He ascended into heaven, He invited us to ascend with Him to be seated with Him in heavenly places. 

Further to that, He offers us His wisdom to navigate through life. He gives us comfort for the broken hearted. He offers peace that passes all understanding. He offers joy as a gift for just knowing Him and His salvation.  

He then goes further yet and Loves us with an everlasting love which He demonstrates to us through His faithfulness and His steadfastness and His patience and His provision and His presence.

There is none like Him.

Who is this king of glory?

The Lord God of hosts.

Amen.

Friday, April 30th 2021

Written May 1st 2021 12:20 AM

GIVE THANKS TO GOD.

The lord Jesus  is a mighty God. He is righteous and just. He is a great judge and will judge the whole earth. 

Seek Him while He may yet be found.

THE LORD IS OUR REDEEMER

It doesn't matter who you are. You need to be redeemed by God.

You may think that you are exempt from the fate  that humans face when they are eternally adrift from God but you are wrong.

If you have not believed that the Lord Jesus Christ shed his blood and died to save you from your sins, you will be eternally lost.

The gift that is given for salvation is straight forward and free  and so it is perhaps easy to ignore it. However,  the regret of having passed up a free gift that would have redeemed you out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light will be a bitter pill to swallow.

At least give serious consideration to something that pertains to your soul because once the curtains close, there is absolutely no way of getting a second chance. All second chances are gained while you are alive on the earth. Once the silver string is cut, once the golden bowl is broken, your eternal destiny is sealed.

Call on the name of Jesus with a believing and humble heart and He will hear you and translate you from darkness to light. 

THE LORD OUR GOD IS A SOVEREIGN KING

Praise and honor the Lord our God.  Even though our God is a superlatively great and mighty king, He is accessible to people who humble themselves and call upon His name.

He is near enough that He can be reached by humble souls who sincerely must have Him.

He is  wonderful and  gracious with mercy and kindness to give to those who ask. He is absolutely the best person you will ever have a chance to meet in your life.

 Seek Him while He may yet be found.

Amen.

 THE LORD JESUS IS OUR SALVATION

We who sat in darkness saw a great light.  That light is the light of Jesus who died for us on a cross.  He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven where He was crowned as king of kings and lord of lords. He was also made our high priest who makes intercession  for us before the Father.

This gift of salvation is imputed to us as righteousness that the perfect Son of God lived on our behalf. He also died on our behalf and in doing so, took our sins from us. We can therefore share in this great salvation by believing that Jesus did indeed die for us and that He has the power to save us having demonstrated his capability to do so by rising from the dead.

Believe in Jesus and His work of salvation and be saved.

THE LORD JESUS IS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning was the word and word was with God and the word was God.

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

The Lord our God is the supreme ruler of His wonderful kingdom of righteousness. His kingdom encompasses the areas of heaven and earth. On earth, His kingdom is the means by which His awesome salvation is spread throughout the earth. 

The agents of His kingdom are those willing servants whom He uses as instruments to infiltrate the kingdom of darkness and win people out of darkness and into His marvelous light.  His kingdom is a kingdom of honor,  reconciliation, peace  and  love and therefore the agents He uses for the work of His kingdom will have to be trained in the practice of honor, reconciliation, peace and love. 

The Lord Himself gives righteousness to His agents as they put to death their sinful natures and embrace the life of the Spirit. As they forsake their fleshly desires, He adds to them the training for the works of the Kingdom and they grow in capacity and authority.

Pray unceasingly and subject yourself to the leading of the Holy Spirit. You will be guided towards growth in the spirit and your function in the kingdom will be shown to you. 

Amen.

THE LORD IS MIGHTY IN POWER

Praise the Lord Jesus who is mighty to save.

All His ways are ways of righteousness and all His paths are peace.

How blessed are we to have God who upholds righteousness and is mighty to do so lest we be under the perpetual foot of  the powers of darkness.

Our God is perfect and altogether beyond reproach who made a public spectacle of the powers and authorities of darkness.

In doing this, the Lord also made a way for us so that we who were lost in the domain of darkness could be redeemed into God's awesome kingdom of light.

Amen.  

O LORD, OUR STRENGTH AND OUR REDEEMER

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech,

And night unto night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor language

Where their voice is not heard.

Their line has gone out through all the earth,

And their words to the end of the world.

In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,

Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,

And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.

Its rising is from one end of heaven,

And its circuit to the other end;

And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD.

Call upon the name of Lord and He will save you.

You may believe that you are unsalvageable. Your belief is wrong. The Lord Jesus is the infinite eternal God who paid the full price for the salvation of your soul and your particular condition is included in the purchase price.

A very high price was paid by God to ransom the people who are His so that if they believe in Him, they are redeemed from the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of light.

How does one call upon the name of the Lord?  

The first thing to know is that the bible says that God is very near to us. You don't have to travel on a pilgrimage to call upon Him. 

Wherever you are, you can find a quiet moment and say out  loud, "Jesus, I am lost. I am trapped.  I heard that you suffered and died for me and that you paid a high price for me. I  call upon you because I believe  that it is true.  I ask you Jesus to forgive me and cleanse me from my sins so that I can leave darkness and move into your light."

It is that simple and it is your first step towards a life of peace and righteousness.

OUR LORD OUR SANCTIFIER

The Lord is our purifier. He is a refiner's fire. He  purges us like gold and silver.

Place yourself under His santifying authority so that He can sterilize your vessel and make you into a usable utensil in His kingdom.

Amen.

OUR GOD YOU REIGN FOREVER

You  are our God. You are our righteous King.

     You are the wisdom before time began.

You made a way where there was no other way.

    You are the wisdom before time began.

You will return in great  glory and power.

    You are the wisdom before time began  

You are the great Judge who'll judge all the earth

    You are the  wisdom before time began.

You reign forever and Your name is ever great. 

    You are the wisdom before time began.

              (Some lyrics by Theophilus) 

OUR GOD WHO PROVIDES

The Lord our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns everything that is.  He has no shortage of materials or provisions that He can dispense to those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.

He is judicious in His allocations by giving more to those who are faithful in managing  what He has given them.

He lavishes His bounty on those who trust Him and cast their cares upon Him.

Bless the Lord who blesses us so richly.

OUR GOD OUR HEALER

In the passage of our lives, we human beings run into circumstances where they contract illnesses both physical, and mental. As well, we sometimes run into physical and mental injuries because of  trauma that we encounter.  

In many cases, especially in modern times,  human specialists can intervene and repair the effects of these various illnesses and injuries. A doctor could mend your broken leg or a psychiatrist could prescribe drugs  to alleviate mental anguish.

In many more case, people find that they cannot afford medical intervention or that their problems exceed the capabilities of the medical practitioners around them.  

It at these points that desperation can lead some to call out for metaphysical intervention. Some may seek the assistance of tribal medicine men or witch doctors.  Other will see spiritual practitioners of traditions like Reiki or New Age practices.

It is however, the Christian culture of calling on the creator of the universe to heal our infirmities that raises a profoundly stirring question. Could asking the creator of the universe and the creator of our bodies and minds be inclined to assist with the repair of us when we need help?

Christian history is replete with examples of otherwise hopeless cases being redeemed by  miraculous intervention.  In the bible, the gospels record  a man born blind suddenly sees and a woman with a terrible back injury is suddenly able to stand up straight and walk normally after being stooped over for 18 years.

In fact the whole bible lists a large number of cases where people called uppong GOd to heal them of ailments and these ailments would be remediated immediately. In rarer events, people who had been described as dead were revived from death and returned to life.

If the God of the Universe has proclaimed his willingness to heal people, would this not be an irrefutable proof of His authorship of the universe and of human life and is in fact deeply involved in the affairs of men?

The healing of  humans is a calling card of the Most High God. If you seek His promises pertaining to healing and press Him for intervention, you will be astounded by the immediacy and  efficacy of God's response.

THE EVERLASTING GOD

Our universe is not permanent. It has been known for some time that the universe had a definite beginning. This understanding is not even the result of a deep scientific pursuit but rather can be deduced by considering that if, while travelling along a trail, you find a heap of ashes with heat still emanating from the mound, it is reasonable to deduce that a source of that heat, likely a fire, was recently burning at that spot.  Likewise, our universe is still emitting heat which indicates that the original emergence of the  universe  is not infinitely distant in history but rather a definite point within the measurable past.      

To rationally conceptualize the requirements of the existence of the temporal universe in which we live,  we must erect two distinct frameworks. One scaffold  is the temporal one we recognize as our universe and another, is an eternal superstructure that must permanently endure from which the temporal one springs.

In the understanding of the naturalists or atheists, there is no eternal superstructure. To them, the basis for the existence of our universe is an infinite regression ( and progression ) of temporal evolutions that end up, by happenstance, expressing the current iteration in which we currently reside.

Of course, any sophomore who has done mental experiments related to infinite regressions knows that such a postulation yields the impossibility of actually arriving at our particular version of the universal flowering.

This untidy fact is cautiously ignored by most current non-theistic thinkers and have no real basis for commenting on the characteristics  and condition of the universe that truly should not exist when logically constructed on their world view. At some point, however far back one would care to suppose, an infinite and conscious being must exist in order for a universe like ours to exist especially when it is smudged (however so slightly) with living and conscious beings.   

Christianity, when examined at its foundational tenets, easily asserts the infinite and conscious being at the center of its  world view as God. Christianity closes a peculiar loop in the metaphysical  explanation for existence by firstly (and correctly) identifying that an eternal conscious being must exists in order for our universe to exist. Secondly, Christianity elevates the self-aware nature of human beings as being superlatively significant. Thirdly, Christianity declares that  the self-aware properties of human beings are the direct result of being deliberately designed in the image and likeness of the creator of the cosmos. Axiomatically,  this means that humans are made not only to look like God but also made to operate like God.

Using this as an initiating circumstance, one can understand why human beings are alive, why they are conscious and more tellingly, why they are able to study the universe and its accoutrements and understand its construction and functions.  An atheistic worldview would have an extremely hard time explaining how a natural evolution of a species would result in a form of consciousness that can turn around and successfully study and understand the universal backdrop from which it emerged.

It is here where the Christian can layout a comprehensible rationale for the nature of mankind and then go on to explain our current status and the remedy offered by God for our plight which is plainly a fallen one.

An atheist cannot explain existence in general and certainly cannot explain consciousness and curiosity in particular without resorting to feeble trains of  sequential mindless events whose contingencies beggar credulity. 

A Christian rests in the knowledge that an elemental buttress of reality is baked into the fabric of the faith from the dawn of human civilization.  Irrefutably,  Christian canon has presented God with all the attributes that are a required for our existence while modern scientific endeavors have been stubbornly unyielding to the naturalist's dream of discovering the universe's fonz et origo apart from the Christian expression of God.

Further, Christianity presents Christ, a being of staggering qualities, as the exact representation of God the creator and goes onto explain that the apparent enmity between God and man can only be remedied by His suffering , death and resurrection.

For a world view to accurately posit the requirements of our universe, it should be allotted more credibility than a world view that is still claiming to be searching for the "scientific" explanation for the creation of the universe and of the living and conscious beings within it. 

Christianity is indeed credible and implores those who do not know, to accept by faith that Christ is the only salvation offered by God. 

Salvation from what?  Well, salvation from the realm of darkness into which we were born.  We easily recognize the darkness of our world when confronted by the brutish darkness of our distant and recent history and more directly, when we examine our own natures and find that we readily conform to the corrupting influences we are surrounded with. 

Christianity is, in effect, a rescue mission for the humans who are repelled by the workings and demands of the realm of darkness and are searching for a redemption into the  realm of righteousness.

  

THE LORD OUR GOD IS LOVE

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 Love never fails.