REFLECTIONS
Insights from God’s Word into Today’s World
We know the Great Commission mandates us to take the good news to the nations, but we can forget that means our neighbours also. This article from The Gospel Coalition is a good reminder that it all starts by giving ourselves to what is in front of us as well as the bigger picture. It is reminiscent of the man asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”
The phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness” is often mistakenly assumed to originate from the Bible. While it does not emanate from the Bible, there is some truth to it. During the threat of the coronavirus, good hygiene has been vehemently and correctly advocated as the best means of preventative care against infection. The CDC recommends that one wash their hands for a minimum of 20 seconds. In a little experiment, we saw this correlates roughly to the same time it takes to recite the Lord’s Prayer. It would be remiss of us to not take this opportunity to invest in both our physical and our spiritual hygiene. As we explore what it means to be spiritually healthy, we turn our focus to Jesus as he teaches His disciples to pray.
We are in the midst of a season of celebration in the Judeo-Christian world. For followers of Judaism, this is the deeply treasured season of Passover, where members of the Jewish faith remember being spared of God’s wrath by having their houses covered in the blood of a sacrificial lamb. On this day, Good Friday, Christians across the globe remember Jesus – as on this day nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. As we continue learning from Jesus’ journey to the cross, we finally arrive at the pen-ultimate station: the day of his crucifixion. We will look at the account of Jesus praying at the Mount of Olives in the garden of Gethsemane to see the lengths a loving God was willing to go for a people who rejected Him.
Based on SB Ferguson’s book ‘To Seek and To Save’, over the next six days we will be looking at Jesus’ life and celebrating his transformative impact in the lives of people across the generations. We will be highlighting key interactions which Jesus had with people during his earthly ministry – culminating in His glorious passion and resurrection. Today, we begin by looking at the story of Jesus encountering Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42.
The following article is a summary of John Joseph's journey of getting to know Jesus. He tells the story of how God transformed his heart from a self-centred addict and then self-help deception to someone redeemed by God’s grace alone. Today he leads a church in Maryland, USA. The full story appeared in the January/ February 2020 issue of Christianity Today.
In the light of this past Sunday’s message on enhancing our prayer life at a time like this and, in particular, on using the Psalms to enrich our prayers, I want to share three things with you today. The first article is a thought-provoking article by N.T. Wright, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To. The second article is some teaching on the subject from Christopher Ash, Teaching Psalms; Volume2: From text to message, which invites us to see Christ in every Psalm. The third is a resource from Tim Keller which looks at cultivating discipline in prayer.
Michael Arnold is a resident of Hout Bay. He preached at our church on his first book, The Forgotten Feast: And the Covenant of Grace. He has released a second book, Evidence for the Christian Faith: or why you don’t have to throw your mind away to be a believer. The first chapter is called “Go on! Prove it!” and as said in yesterday’s post we are going to be putting helpful articles/stories on our website as an encouragement during this time as well as thinking of Easter two weeks away.
To go along with Sunday the 29th of March’s video message, here are some practical suggestions to maintain a habit of ‘gathering’ around God’s Word during this different season.
I always enjoy hearing from veterans who have stayed the path and kept the faith over decades. There is a sanity about them in the midst of many voices as they have seen and been through a lot. John Hosier has been a pastor in England for almost fifty years and posted this a few days ago. Below is his insight into the Book of Revelation and what it teaches us in this tumultuous season.
