Traps, Tests and Temptations

Ajay Gohill was brought up as a Hindu and worked for the family business in a newsagent in North London. At the age of twenty-one he contracted erythrodermic psoriasis, a chronic skin disease. His weight dropped from 11.5 stone (73kg) to 7.5 stone (47.6kg). The disease was all over his body from head to toe. He lost all his friends. His wife and son left him. He wanted to die.


As Ajay lay dying in hospital he cried out to God. He looked in his locker and found a Bible there. He opened it at Psalm 38 – the psalm for today. Each and every verse seemed relevant to him. He prayed for God to heal him. He fell into a deep sleep. By the next morning he was totally healed. His skin was new like a baby’s and his life was turned around. He was reunited with his son. I interviewed him in one of the services at HTB. He said, ‘Every day I live for Jesus.’


Life is not all plain sailing. You will face many challenges. Whatever you are facing today, God is able to rescue you.

Nicky Gumbel,
YouVersion Bible App

Psalm 28:1-9

Develop a pattern of prayer

Prayer is a key way to develop a relationship with God by speaking with him. There is no set way to do this. There are hundreds of different prayers in the Bible. Sometimes, it is helpful to follow a pattern (such as the Lord’s Prayer). Another pattern that I have found helpful is using the mnemonic ‘ACTS’. These elements are often found in the prayers we see in Scripture.
The context of this psalm is fear – possibly the fear of premature death. David may be facing illness or deep despair. He fears that he might die in disgrace and go down ‘to the pit’ (v.1).
His prayer to God includes the following:

• A: Lord I adore you
  ‘Praise be to the Lord’ (v.6a); even in the midst of a difficult situation, David chose to praise God. Whatever the circumstances, praise God for who he is and what he has done. We see another example of this in the New Testament passage as the people worship Jesus (Mark 11:9–10).


• C: I confess
  ‘Hear my cry for mercy’ (Psalm 28:2a); ask God’s forgiveness for anything that you have done wrong. This is also a moment to forgive anyone you need to forgive. As Jesus says in todays’ New Testament passage, ‘When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins’ (Mark 11:25).

• T: I will give you thanks
  ‘My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him’ (Psalm 28:7c). Thank God for health, family, friends and so on. The importance of thanksgiving can also be seen in the Old Testament reading for today (see Leviticus 7:12–15).

• S: Hear my supplication
  ‘… as I call to you for help’ (Psalm 28:2a). Pray for yourself, for your friends and for others. Interestingly David says, ‘I lift up my hands’ (v.2b). This seems to be almost synonymous with prayer. Hands raised in worship is not a modern idea; it is actually one of the most ancient forms of prayer.

Lord, I adore you. I worship you today. Praise be to the Lord...
I confess my sins to you... Hear my cry for mercy and forgive my sins.
I will give thanks to you for you are good. Thank you, Lord, for…
Hear my supplication. Today I call on you for help…

Nicky Gumbel

YouVersion

 

God Multiplies

Hattie May Wiatt, a six-year-old girl, lived near Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia, USA. The Sunday school was very crowded. Russell H. Conwell, the minister, told her that one day they would have buildings big enough to allow everyone to attend. She said, ‘I hope you will. It is so crowded I am afraid to go there alone.’ He replied, ‘When we get the money we will construct one large enough to get all the children in.’

Two years later, in 1886, Hattie May died. After the funeral Hattie’s mother gave the minister a little bag they had found under their daughter’s pillow containing 57 cents in change that she had saved up. Alongside it was a note in her handwriting: ‘To help build bigger so that more children can go to Sunday school.’
The minister changed all the money into pennies and offered each one for sale. He received $250 – and 57 of the cents were given back. The $250 was itself changed into pennies and sold by the newly formed ‘Wiatt Mite Society’. In this way her 57 cents kept on multiplying.
Twenty-six years later, in a talk entitled, ‘The history of the 57 cents’, the minister explained the results of her 57-cent donation: a church with a membership of over 5,600 people, a hospital where tens of thousands of people had been treated, 80,000 young people going through university, 2,000 people going out to preach the gospel – all this happened ‘because Hattie May Wiatt invested her 57 cents’.
The theme of multiplication runs throughout the Bible. What cannot be achieved by addition, God does by multiplication. We reap what we sow, only many times more. What we give to the Lord, he multiplies.

Nicky Gumbel

                                            

Judge wears 'pussy hat' in court, probe launched

(BREITBART) — A short investigation was launched after a Travis County judge wore a pink, knitted “pussy hat” in her courtroom late in January causing, some to doubt her impartiality from the bench.
Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt started her session on January 24 by putting on the pink knitted hat that has become associated with the Women’s March protests held the day after Donald J. Trump took the oath of office to become the 45th president of the United States.
The judge’s shocking partisanship was first noted by Reddit users and soon caused residents to quiz Texas authorities as to whether or not a sitting judge is allowed to wear partisan political paraphernalia on the bench.




Read more  here.

Syrian Arab women battle IS, social stigma

 

Though fighting the most-feared members of the militant Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, hundreds of Arab female fighters are also battling with the disapproval of their relatives and society.

"I braved my tribal clan, my father, my mother. Now I'm braving the enemy," says 21-year-old Batul, who is part of an Arab-Kurdish alliance battling to capture IS's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

She is one of more than 1,000 Arab women who have joined Kurdish male and female fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, according to a spokeswoman.

Read more: 'I joined the Afghan army to save lives'

Standing in the desert some 20 kilometres from Raqqa, Batul speaks passionately about her decision to fight IS, which holds the nearby village of Al-Torshan.

"My parents told me, 'Either you put down your weapons or we disown you'," she says, wearing an ammunition vest and a floral scarf around her shoulders.

Her parents have not spoken to her since.

 

 Batul, a 21-year-old female Arab fighter among the Syrian Democratic Forces, talks to a comrade of hers. ─AFP

 

Batul comes from the Al-Sharabiyeh tribe, one of the best-known of the Arab tribes of northeast Syria.

Her family views her as a rebel, who removed the headscarf worn by many Muslim women and refused her father's orders to pray in front of him.

But she is proud of the decision she took two years ago to join the Kurdish Women's Protection Units, more commonly known as YPJ, which is an all-female Kurdish military organisation and a key component of the SDF alliance.

Also read: Women soldiers: If the boot fits, why shouldn't they wear it?

"I joined the YPJ to liberate my homeland, but also to free women from slavery," she says.

"We must no longer remain cloistered behind four walls." 

Continued, here.

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

A one-year-old boy shattered his back falling down a flight of stairs. He spent his childhood and youth in and out of hospital. Gavin Read, the former Bishop of Maidstone, interviewed him in church. The boy remarked, ‘God is fair.’ Gavin stopped him and asked, ‘How old are you?’ ‘Seventeen,’ the boy replied. ‘How many years have you spent in hospital?’ The boy answered, ‘Thirteen years.’ Gavin asked, ‘Do you think that is fair?’ He replied, ‘God has got all of eternity to make it up to me.’
We live in a world of instant gratification that has almost entirely lost its eternal perspective. The New Testament is full of wonderful promises about the future: all creation will be restored. Jesus will return to establish ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Revelation 21:1). There will be no more crying, for there will be no more pain and suffering. Our frail, decaying mortal bodies will be changed for a body like that of Jesus’ glorious resurrected body.
Suffering is not part of God’s original created order (see Genesis 1–2). There was no suffering in the world before rebellion against God. There will be no suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:3–4). Suffering is, therefore, an alien intrusion into God’s world.
This, of course, is not a complete answer to the question ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ As we saw yesterday there is no simple or complete solution, but each of today’s passages gives us some further insight.

By Nicky Gumbel

YouVersion

Your Most Valuable Possession

 

Raj was one of six children born into a very wealthy Brahmin family - the highest caste in the Indian caste system.

At the age of twenty-three, Raj encountered Jesus Christ. His family disinherited him. They cut him off. As far as they were concerned he was dead. They even held a funeral service for him. Neither his parents, nor his brothers and sisters have ever spoken to him again.
For several weeks he wandered around the streets of Bangalore. He had virtually no food to eat. He walked all day and slept in the park at night.
He started a new life. He began to speak about his new-found faith. Through him, thousands of other people encountered Jesus. He went on to lead a prayer movement of over 3 million people. Then, for several years, we were privileged that he was the National Director of Alpha in India. He said to us recently that he has had a blessed life and that God has more than compensated for his losses. Although he left ‘everything’, in Jesus Christ he found the ‘pearl… of great value’ (Matthew 13:45–46).
Relationships are your most valuable possession. There is one relationship for which you were created. This is the most valuable pearl of all. It is worth selling ‘everything’ in order to get hold of it.

By Nicky Gumbel.

YouVersion 

Nicky Gumbel: Soft on Crime?

Devotional

Soft on Crime?

Newspaper headlines frequently express outrage at judges who are ‘soft on crime’ and fail to impose the appropriate penalty for the offence committed.
When I worked as a barrister, I noticed that the legal profession did not respect judges who were regarded as too lenient. We expect judges to execute justice. We do not expect them simply to be merciful.
On the other hand, we do expect mercy in our personal relationships. A loving parent will be merciful to their child. We expect friends to be merciful to one another. Justice and mercy do not normally go together. We tend to see them as alternatives. We expect either justice or mercy, but not both at the same time.
Yet God is both a God who judges with justice, and also a God of mercy. How can he combine these two apparently contradictory characteristics? The answer is that the sacrifice of Jesus has made it possible for God to combine both justice and mercy.
When I first encountered Jesus, this illustration helped me to understand what Jesus achieved for us on the cross: Two people went through school and university together and developed a close friendship. Life went on and they went their separate ways and lost contact. One went on to become a judge, while the other’s life spiralled down and he ended up as a criminal. One day the criminal appeared before the judge. He had committed a crime to which he pleaded guilty. The judge recognised his old friend and faced the dilemma, which, in effect, God faces.
He was a judge so he had to be just; he couldn’t simply let the man off. On the other hand, he wanted to be merciful, because he loved his friend. So he fined him the correct penalty for the offence. That was justice. Then he came down from his position as judge and wrote a cheque for the amount of the fine. He gave it to his friend, saying that he would pay the penalty for him. That was an act of mercy, love and sacrifice.
The illustration is not an exact one. Our plight is worse – the penalty we face is death. The relationship is closer – your Father in heaven loves you more than any earthly parent loves their child. And the cost is greater. It cost God far more than money – he came himself, in the person of Jesus, and paid the penalty of sin.
God is not soft on crime. In his justice, God judges us because we are guilty. Then in his mercy and love he comes down in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, and pays the penalty for us. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God is both just and merciful.

Source: YouVersion 

 

How to Fight Fear

 

 

 

 

 

Devotional

How to Fight Fear

At one level, fear is healthy. ‘Fear’ is an emotion induced by a perceived threat. It is a natural human emotion. It is God-given. It is a basic survival mechanism. It keeps us alive. It protects us from danger.
However, there is also such a thing as unhealthy fear. The Greek word commonly used in the New Testament is phobos – from which we get the word ‘phobia’. This is unhealthy fear. It is disproportionate to the danger posed. It is ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. It is when I catastrophise – overestimating the danger and underestimating my ability to cope.

Common phobias include fears in relation to health, finances, failure, growing old, death, loneliness, rejection, messing up, public speaking, flying, heights, snakes and spiders. They also include things such as, what is now called, FOMO – the fear of missing out, the fear of not being special.

In my own life I have experienced many fears – from a fear of heights to panic attacks and other irrational fears, fears about preaching and a fear of doing anything that might bring dishonour to the name of Jesus.
Whereas the Spirit of God does not produce negative fear, there is a kind of healthy fear – the fear of God. This does not mean being frightened of God. In fact, it means the opposite. It is an understanding of who God is in relation to us. It means respect, reverence, awe, honour, adoration and worship; and it could even be translated as love for God. It recognises the power, majesty and holiness of God Almighty. It leads to a healthy respect of God and is the antidote to all other fears and phobias we experience in life. Fear God and you need not fear anything else or anyone else.

It is no coincidence that as the fear of God has decreased in our society, all the other fears have increased. We need to return to a right relationship with God.

Source: You Version

 

John McCain Admits He Spread Trump Hooker Hoax