Read Bible for Yourself

Freed to Serve God When God is your Shield, you are set absolutely free to do God’s will alone. Within His protection, you only fight when and how He asks you to. Under the New Covenant He does not allow us to attack even those who attack us. In the most difficult situations, we are under obligation to affirm our faith in God as the Saviour of the world, of all people, of all nations. Abraham and His Offspring Insured Survival warfare was the order of the day when God called Abram to make him a blessing to all nations. Fundamental to the assurance that made Abraham move out of safety zone was God’s assurance of his safety, that “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” (Gen 12:3 ESV). The Lord reiterated this assurance after Lot left Abraham for Sodom, saying, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." (Gen 15:1 ESV) For Abraham to fulfill God’s mission, he had to leave his own mission of eking out su...

My Ephesians God’s grand plan is to bring all things together in Christ, whether things in Heaven or on earth, whether Jews or Gentiles. It was Paul’s prayer therefore that those who were already in Christ, believers,  would appreciate that they have the greatest estate through time and eternity, and realize what great calling they have received to be early partakers with God in the unfolding Divine scheme. The revelation of God’s grand plan (mystery) was hidden from previous generations and even the “authorities in heaven” (2:5, 10), and is now being made manifest through the church. In view of the above, believers are to walk in compassion (not condemnation) towards unbelievers, working to bring them in, seeing that they were themselves unbelievers a short while ago. Also, believing Gentiles should not consider themselves different from or opposed to believing Jews, since Christ preached peace to either group (2:17), and both have received the same Holy Spirit. F...

What would you do with YOUR ENEMIES, those WHO CURSE YOU, HATE YOU, DESPITEFULLY USE YOU and PERSECUTE YOU? Ok. Now what would you do with the FORCES OF DARKNESS? And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit  ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. (Luke 9:54-56) FUNNY OR TRAGIC? The funny story is told of a preacher who threw out of his chapel gentleman who was disrupting the sermon. He was confronted later by his presbytery, who said, Jesus would have rather cast out the devil motivating the man’s action. He replied that casting the man out still equaled removing the devil from the chapel. As awkward as this story seems that is how some disciples initially wanted Jesus to treat sinners – burn them along with th...

When the Lord laid it on my heart to preach this on Lord's Supper Day, I just went dumb. How do I relate this to the bread and wine...wait a minute,...blood and body,...bingo! These are affected in warfare! Then silence again, how? The fact that the congregation I was billed to minister with could number not more than 20 made the enterprise no less daunting. This is what we ended up with: The first reading was Revelations 12:11 - " And they overcame him (Satan) because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, ..." and maybe we should have read in addition 2 Co. 10:2-5. Touching on the two phases in which the saints overcame Satan: First by the blood, the set L/S wine and bread came in handy to place emphasis on how Christ never wants us to forget the emblems of our EXIT victory. Those can never be replicated. He has already won the victory that has set us free from bondage to Satan and sin. Bringing in the illustration of Israel's exit from...