Category: Bible

Writings like straw

October 18, 2022

I read this today about Thomas Aquinas and his vision from heaven…

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was one of the church’s most celebrated defenders of the faith. Yet just three months before his death, something caused him to leave unfinished his Summa Theologica, the massive legacy of his life’s work. While reflecting on the broken body and shed blood of his Savior, Aquinas claimed to see a vision that left him without words. He said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings seem like straw.”

Imagine sitting down to write a summary of your theology as you were coming to the end of your life. It would be classed as your life’s most important work. Then having a vision from heaven that was so amazing, that anything you wrote after that seemed like straw!

His vision must have been truly amazing to render anything he wrote as straw in his eyes. Oh that we would all have a vision so amazing!

G.R.O.W.

September 28, 2022

I was doing my morning prayer time today and I kept thinking about the word grow. As I reflected I used the letters of grow as an acrostic to help me/us to keep growing in our faith.

G – God first. We need to continue to seeking first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33)

R – Reach out. We need to continue to reach out with God’s love and saving message through Jesus (John 3:16)

O – Offer ourselves. We need to continue to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God for His service (Romans 12:1-2)

W – Walk in His ways. We need to continue fear the Lord and walk in God’s ways (Psalm 128:1)

This simple acrostic can give us some things to help us grow in our faith. If we keep mindful of these four things we will keep moving forward in our faith.

Prayer

Dear God, I want to continue to grow in my faith and trust in You. Please help me to put You first, reach out to others, offer myself to You and walk in Your ways. I ask in Jesus name, Amen.

Why did Jesus wait before going to Lazarus?

September 26, 2022

One of the questions that has often puzzled me from the raising of Lazarus is why did Jesus wait two days until He left. In john 11:38-44 it gives us some clues. In verse 38 Jesus says that if we believe, we will see the glory of God. So Jesus delaying was about people hearing about the miracle and seeing God’s glory.

In today’s Our Daily Bread there is some extra insight that I thought I would share. It shows a couple of extra things that are not obvious from the text…

After Jesus learned Lazarus was gravely ill, He waited two days to go to the home of his sisters, Mary and Martha (John 11:1–6). When Jesus and His disciples arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days (v. 17). This allowed a day for the news to reach Jesus and a day for Him to reach Bethany. So, Lazarus may have already been dead when the news reached Jesus that he was ill. That it had been four days was significant because in that warm climate, Lazarus’ body would have been severely decomposed (v. 39). If Jesus had left immediately and resurrected Lazarus, naysayers could’ve easily denied his resurrection, suggesting he’d only been in a deep sleep or coma. It was also significant because in that day some Jews believed the soul hovered over the body for three days, hoping to reenter. But by four days, even that hope would have expired.

If you want to read the full devotion you can find it at https://odb.org

Preaching again tomorrow

September 24, 2022

I am preaching again tomorrow at our church. I am not sure how many times I have preached this year, maybe once every 4-6 weeks.

At our church we do our roster up for three months at a time. In that period I am usually on twice. Every now and someone asks me to fill in for them as they will be away.

Tomorrow I will be looking at two passages. The main one is James 1:3-12. I have three verses I want to highlight and talk about. They are verses 3, 5 and 12.

The other passage comes from 2 Corinthians 4:8-11, 16-18. This passage is to just give us some final encouragement before closing.

If you are interested I will put the full text and audio up here tomorrow afternoon.

Blessings,
Dave

Mobile church

September 9, 2022

Last week we held our church service in another town. It is about 50km from where we live and regularly have church. We loaded everyone in to a bus or in cars and headed out.

We started doing this as an outreach and because we have some people who live in Westonia who come to our church each week. It makes it easier for them to invite their friends to church.

After a nice service we had a Fathers Day picnic at the local undercover area. We sat, talked, ate and had a quiz. It was a really nice way to do church.

So far this year we have done it twice that I have been to. Both times it was really fun. It is something I hope we continue to do as a church.

If you are interested you can watch the service above.