Sunday 24 September 2017

John 14 (Thirteen) Life Abundantly (continued)

Please accept my apologies. I'm re-posting messages and did not realise this one followed the previous one, which I reposted two weeks ago. It may, therefore, be wise to quickly read the previous post on "Life Abundantly".

Here is the re-post.

Our last message got a bit long, so I had to leave it to continue later. Today’s message will therefore be slightly shorter as a conclusion of our previous message. 
"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you (John 14:18-20).

I read a book called ‘Divine Appointments’. In it the author told of how he was painting his house when he heard a lady in distress calling for help from the street. Her car had broken down. He helped repairing the car and then the lady, who was Madonna, asked him if he would drive home with her in case the car broke down again. He conceded and had a wonderful opportunity to share the Gospel with her.

Imagine he was not in Jesus and in the Father and therefore did not recognise the divine appointment arranged for him and Madonna. Imagine he instead considered the ‘wise’ advice he had learnt in church that a man should not minister to a woman and so forth. Imagine he turned around, ignoring her plea for help because he was dead scared that she would provoke him into sin, since he had heard in church that it usually happens. Imagine he thought that he had to check with his pastor first. What would then have happened? Madonna would never have had her God-ordained opportunity to hear the Gospel from him. Fortunately for Madonna he was mature in Christ. He knew when the Lord was speaking, and his intimacy with Christ and the Father overruled all religion preached by the church of today. This type of Divine Appointment happens regularly.

It is not that we try to discredit the church, but the task of the church leadership is "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up," (Ephesians 4:12 - for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ - KJV).

This ‘preparing or perfecting’ should be a process by which Christians are taught how to be intimate with the triune Godhead, in other words how to be ‘in Jesus’ who is ‘in the Father’ through the Holy Spirit. Once we have learnt to be one with the Lord, He can start working through us just like the Father worked through Jesus while He was on earth. If we could grasp this secret on how the Godhead functions in relation to us - the called ones - the church will be much more effective and powerful.

Lord, I want to move as one with you.

Give your children a sporting chance for a faith relationship with God. Teach them more than Bible stories. Teach them Biblical and life principles with the help of The Nutshell College Train-a-Child series. 

For more information and a beautiful high definition version go to http://t-a-c.co.za




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