WHO IS JESUS?

What is The Alpha Course?

Alpha is for anyone interested in exploring questions of life and spirituality.

We spend 8 evenings considering some of the big questions in life including:
“What can I really believe?” ”Does prayer work?” “Who is Jesus?” and “Is there a God?”

THE TALISMAN OF VICTORY

THE TALISMAN OF VICTORY
"In all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us."-- Rom_8:37.

CAN ANYTHING separate me from the love of Christ? was the only question that St. Paul felt worth consideration. 
In this paragraph he takes the extreme conditions of being, and carefully investigates them, knowing that they include all between. 
First, he interrogates Existence--"death and life"; next, created Intelligences--"Angels, principalities, and powers"; 
next, the extremes of Time--"things present, things to come"; next, of Space---"height and depth"; 
lastly, the created Universe --"any other creature." Each of these extremes is passed in review. 
He is like a man proving every link of the chain in which he is going to swing out over the abyss. Carefully and fervently he has tested all, and is satisfied that none of them can cut him off from the love of God.

We strangely misjudge and mistrust the Love of God our Father, and think that our distresses and sufferings, our sins and failures, may make Him love us less. 
But in the home, it is not the troop of sturdy children that engross the mother's care so much as the puny feeble life, that lies in the cot, unable to help itself and reciprocate her love. And in the world, death and pain, disease and sorrow, sin and failure, so far from separating us from God's love, bind us closer.
Oh blessed Love! that comes down to us from the heart of Jesus, the essence of the eternal love of God--nothing can ever staunch, exhaust, intercept it. It is not our love to Him, but His to us, and since nothing can separate us from the love of God, He will go on loving us for ever, and pouring into us the entire fullness of His life and glory. 
Whatever our difficulties, whatever our weakness and infirmity, we shall be kept steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; gaining by our losses, succeeding by our failures, triumphing in our defeats, and ever more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

PRAYER
Yea thro' life, thro' sorrow and thro' sinning He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ is the beginning, for the end is Christ.

Scatters yet increases!

Scatters yet increases!

John Francis <disciplejohn@outlook.com>

Back to the Bible daily 30th September

Proverbs 11:24 There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.

Our God has great super natural power that is beyond our understanding, because we know that no one can walk on water yet our Lord did. No one can bring the dead back to life after they have been dead for three days, but our Lord did. In the same way my life can be such that all my personal possessions are lost to me yet I still can increase. How can this be? The answer is in the text that shows us that God is a supernatural power that can both give and take away.

In the past I was put in a situation where all my reserve of savings were used in a purpose I had not expected. I believe there should have been sufficient money there from another source, and there was no satisfactory explanation where that money has gone. I was not concerned because God has already restored a lot of my savings from another unexpected source. My God restores what the locust has taken. away

Prayer: Thank you loving Heavenly Father because all we have comes from you, we are nothing without you. Grant that God the Holy Ghost will constantly provoke us, so we will serve you better. May your will be done your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Put you on the Lord Jesus

“Put you on the Lord Jesus.”
Mat_22:1-14
Mat_22:2-3
It was their sovereign who invited them, and to refuse His invitation was an act of rebellion. 
Their presence was intended to render honour to the marriage of their prince, and their resolution to be absent was a studied insult both to the king and His son. God in infinite condescension has decreed to glorify His Son by bestowing His rich grace upon undeserving man, and when man willfully rejects the favour, he is guilty of insulting the Lord of love. 
Will any of us live and die in this sin?
Mat_22:4
He was very patient, and condescended to reason with His erring subjects, hoping that perhaps their second thoughts might correct their hasty words. He even pleaded with them, though He might have sent forth His armies at once to destroy them. How true a representation is this of the great Father of mercy!
Mat_22:5-6
Only a few were persecutors, the many were despisers only, but they perished in the general doom, for they had despised their prince.
Mat_22:7; Mat_22:10
Those who hear the gospel regularly are often found rejecting it, yet the Lord’s purposes of grace will not fail, Jesus shall see of the travail of his soul, and heaven shall be tenanted by rejoicing millions. Out of the poorest and meanest of mankind sovereign grace will select its favoured ones, and make them partakers of its bounty.

Mat_22:11-12
His conduct was as gross an insult as that of those who refused to come. A dress was provided for each guest, but he would not put it on, he despised the royal livery, and defied the regal law in the palace itself. Thus do those act who unite themselves with the church, and yet are not holy, nor obedient to Jesus. 
They insult the Redeemer to His face and defy Him in His own house. Are any of us guilty of this? Do we profess to be Christians, and go to the communion table, though we do not wear the garments of sanctification! 
If so, let us tremble at the doom which awaits us.

Mat_22:13-14
Even in the visible church all are not the
Lord’s elect. What need of careful self-examination! 
Lord, make us to be truly thine own.

Oh! why do mortals yet despise
This Bridegroom from above?
And for their farms and merchandise
Neglect the feast of love?

Send forth thy messengers, O Lord,
Through all the haunts of sin;
And, hailing sinners by thy word,
Compel them to come in.

For they, who once this supper taste,
Shall thirst for sin no more;
And they, who see The Bridegroom’s face,
Eternally adore.

“What think you of Christ?”

“What think you of Christ?”
Mat_22:15-46

Mat_22:15-16
Men who wish to ensnare us begin with flattery. Let us beware of smooth speeches.
Mat_22:21
By using Cæsar’s coinage they confessed their subjection to his authority, and they were bound to act accordingly. Civil rulers are to be obeyed in civil things, but they must not touch religion, that is the sphere of God alone. Attention to this rule would be a great blessing both to Church and State.
Mat_22:22-32
A most conclusive reply, which shut the mouths of the Sadducees, and showed the Saviour’s infinite superiority to their fancied wisdom.
Mat_22:43-45
This was a puzzle for them, out of which they could not see their way, and thus Jesus left the field victorious over all his foes.

If ask’d what of Jesus I think,
Though still my best thoughts are but poor,
I say, he’s my meat and my drink,
My life, and my strength, and my store,
My Shepherd, my Husband, my Friend,
My Saviour from sin and from thrall,
My Hope from beginning to end,
My Portion, my Lord, and my All.

Christ must be born miraculously

Luke 1:31  You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call His name Jesus. 
Luke 1:32  He will be great, be called 'Son of the Highest.' The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; 

Luke 1:34  Mary said to the angel, "But how? I've never slept with a man."

Luke 1:35  The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest hover over you; Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.

 Luke 1:26-38

We have here an account of the mother of our Lord; though we are not to pray to her, yet we ought to praise God for her. Christ must be born miraculously. The angel's address means only, Hail, thou that art the especially chosen and favoured of the Most High, to attain the honour Jewish mothers have so long desired. This wondrous salutation and appearance troubled Mary. The angel then assured her that she had found favour with God, and would become the mother of a son whose name she should call Jesus, the Son of the Highest, one in a nature and perfection with the Lord God. JESUS! the name that refreshes the fainting spirits of humbled sinners; sweet to speak and sweet to hear, Jesus, a Saviour! We know not his riches and our own poverty, therefore we run not to him; we perceive not that we are lost and perishing, therefore a Saviour is a word of little relish. Were we convinced of the huge mass of guilt that lies upon us, and the wrath that hangs over us for it, ready to fall upon us, it would be our continual thought, Is the Saviour mine? And that we might find him so, we should trample on all that hinders our way to him. Mary's reply to the angel was the language of faith and humble admiration, and she asked no sign for the confirming her faith. Without controversy, great was the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, 1Ti_3:16. Christ's human nature must be produced so, as it was fit that should be which was to be taken into union with the Divine nature. And we must, as Mary here, guide our desires by the word of God. In all conflicts, let us remember that with God nothing is impossible; and as we read and hear his promises, let us turn them into prayers, Behold the willing servant of the Lord; let it be unto me according to thy word.

to believe in Christ as a spiritual Saviour, as the Lamb of God,

Luke 1:16  
He will turn many sons and daughters of Israel back to their God. 

Luke 1:16

And many of the children of Israel,.... To whom only, or at least chiefly, He was sent, and came preaching, and administering the ordinance of baptism; and great multitudes of them flocked unto Him, attended on His ministry, believed in His doctrine, and submitted to His baptism, but not all; for some slighted His preaching, and rejected His baptism: however, some there were, and many too, that were converted under His ministry, confessed their sins, and were baptized by Him; which verified this prediction: 

shall he turn to the Lord their God; not Jehovah, the Father; for though He was the Lord God of the Jews in general, and of those that were turned by John's ministry in a special manner; yet John cannot be said "to go before him", as He is in the next verse; but the Messiah is here meant, who is the Lord Jehovah, and is often so called in the Old Testament; particularly in a prophecy afterwards respected, Isa_40:3 a name peculiar to God alone: and who also is called God, as He is frequently with additional epithets; as the mighty God, God over all, the great God, the true God, and eternal life; and our, your, and their God, the God of His covenant people, whether Jews or Gentiles; see Isa_25:9. Conversion, which is meant by turning to God, is not man's work, but God's; and is effected by His mighty power, which is only equal to it; but John was to be, and was, an instrument of the conversion of many among the Jews, by preaching the doctrine of repentance towards God, and faith in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, that was just ready to come: he was the means in the hand of God, of turning many from sin, of bringing them to a true sense of it, and to an hearty and ingenuous confession and acknowledgment of it; and from trusting to, and depending upon, their birth privileges, legal duties, and self-righteousness; and from their gross notions of a temporal Messiah; and of leading them to believe in Christ as a spiritual Saviour, as the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, that should take away the sin of the world.