Waiting on God( Psalm 40 v1)

Let me ask you a question, are you good at waiting ?,years ago as childrem we would say to our mother when's the dinner going to be ready?,and she would reply, 'it's in the hottest place in the house'. Children can be very impatient, and so can adults,my wife gets impatient often when we are in a queue ,and she will say to me,'look there's only two people on the till.' But what about waiting on God?,now that's a challenge, for  often it means literally waiting maybe a long time and still we wait. My experience of getting into the ministry was praying and waiting,praying and more waiting. I looked up a poem by a  man call Russel  Kelfer on waiting,it is a very long poen but is it well worth reading, I leave you with some of the verses from it.

                  'Desperately, helplessly, lovingly, I cried. Quietly , patiently, lovingly,He replied,

                      I pleaded ,and I wept for a clue to my fate, ,and the Master so gently said,

                                                             ''Child,you must wait''

                  ''Wait?.you say wait?''my indignant reply''Lord ,I need answers,I need to know why'

                   Is your hand shortened?Or have you not heard? By faith I have asked,and I'm 

                                                                claiming your word.

                  My future,snd all to which I can relate.hangs in the balance,and you tell me to wait?.

                  I'm needing a 'yes'a go-ahead sign,or even a 'no' to which I can resign.

                 'And Lord,you have promised that if we believe,We need but ask,and we shall receive,

                 And Lord I've been asking,and this is my cry,''I'm weary of asking, I need a reply''

                Then quietly,softly,I learned my fate,As my Master replied once again,''You must wait''

                So I slumped in my chair,defeated and taut,and grumbled to God. ''So I'm waiting for what?''

                He seemed to kneel,and His eyes met mine,and He tenderly said,''I could give you a sign''.

                I could shake the heavens,darken the sun,raise the dead,cause the mountains to run.

               ''So be silent my child,and in time you will see,that the greatest gifts is to get to know Me.

                And though oft' may my answers seem terribly late,My most precious answer of all.....

                                                                   is still....Wait

                             'The  only thing harder than waiting on God,is wishing you had'

                                                               

                                                                  

                  

                      

                                                               

                                                                 

             

 

The only certainity. ( John 11 v 25)

 I heard this recently,' Certainty is a grave for little children', lets face it,we live in a very uncertain world, I'm sure you know the saying that the only certainty in life is ,'death and taxes'.I don't want to unsettle any of you, but we have to face the fact we live in an uncertain world. Sport has examples,one that gives me much pleasure ,when a little cricket team in Sion Mills in Northern Ireland routed the great West Indies for 25 runs,in  Jan 1969. Many people have been ruined by  betting on that horse,that investment, the South Sea Bubble in the 18th century ruined thousands of  investers,it was the worlds first financial crash,the first of many. No matter how careful you are in life,there are no guarantees, of a life free from uncertaity. The Goliath's in this world can be defeated,even by a young lad,one has said,'People cannot control,understand,or anticipate what life will bring'.Let us rerturn to one certainity I mentioned death,now that is a certainity,I can guarantee that,people look at death in different ways,billions  believe there is an after life,and so they place their hope in dare I say false religions,that is a false hope. In Hebrews 6 v19, we read,'We have this hope as an anchor for the soul,firm, and secure', that hope is in Christ and what He has done,by His life,death,resurrection,and ascension. He is the certainity and the only certainity we can build our hopes on.

                                                       'Upom a life I have not lived,

                                                        Upon a death I did not die,

                                                        Another's life,another's death

                                                        I stake my whoe eternity.

                                                        Jesus,O Son of God,I build

                                                        On what Thy cross has done 

                                                        for me'

                                                              Words Haratius Bonasr 

God is faithful. ( Hebrews 13 v 6)

 Recently I had Cataract surgery on my left eye ,it went fine, and I hope to have the other eye done shortly, well this has brought me a little problem, I can't always remember how to prononce the word Cataract,so  I wrote it on the palm of my hand. This reminded me of the words in Isaiah 49 ,I will come to the words shortly , but lets look  at the context,Isaiah had prophesied that Israel would be taken to Babylon ,( Isa 39 v 5 -6) he also prophesied their return (Isa 49 v v8ff),but the people found it hard to believe,they had suffered a great deal,and had lost much,and were filled despair,here is what they said,' The Lord has forsaken me,the Lord has forgotten me'.v14.Forsaken and forgotten even by God ,sometimes the trials that we face can overwhelm us,and we feel  like Israel of old,and we say where is God ?,has He forsaken ,and forgotten me?. God replied  with very reassuring words,'Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands' .(Not just one hand ,but both hands ) As with Israel of old, apply these words into  your situation  ,He hasn't forsaken you,nor forgotten you,it could be that it may help us to write those words on the palms of our hands,yes both hands, and they will remind us daily that God's presence is with  us ,in our darkest trials ,and experiences.

                                                  'Forsaken ,forgotten,by God?

                                                                 'Never'

Glory will be glorious. ( John 14 v1 -3 )

 As I got into bed recently,I said,'Another day over,where is it leading  me?, I suppose I should have asked, 'where is He leading me?'  Joseph H.Gilmore wrote .

                                             'He leadeth me! O blessed thought!

                                              O words with heavenly comfort Fraught!

                                              Whate'er I  do,where'er I be,

                                               Still'tis God's hand that leadeth me'.

Where am I heading to? we are not on a road leading to nowhere,we are not just going round in pointless circles, God is a God of purpose,and the purpose He has for all His children, is to bring them to glory Hebrews 2 v10. FF.Bruce says ,'Christ is the Saviour who blazed the trail of salvation along  which alone God's ''many sons'' could be brought to glory'. Nothing can stop that happening , absolutely nothing.Al  Jolson sung a song with the words,'we'll make a little heaven right here on earth' Belinda Carlisle sung a  song with the following words ,''Heaven is a place on earth''. It is not possible, people who think that way,are deluded,listen to the news,read history.look at all the suffering there is in life,the castles we build ,soon crumble into dust,they are also like  sand castles,that are washed away when the tide comes in. The Bible speaks of heaven as being glory,because it is glorious in every way. John Lennon wrote, 'Imagine there's no heaven', but praise God there is a heaven,and Jesus is going to bring us there. God is leading His Children ? .to heaven, that is His desire.

                                 Father,I want those you have given me to be with me 

                                            where I am,and to see my glory.'

                                                                John 17 v24

Death will die. ( Revelation 21 v 4 )

I have two favourite flowers ,the rose and the geranium ,the rose for it's beauty and the geranium for it's flowers and easy maintenance. I just want to mention the rose,one of my roses has a large white flower but it will last for a while but soon it whithers  and is gone.If only I could preserve that beauty,but I can't,yes soon their beauty is decayed, nothing can change that.The most beautiful person will soon loose their beauty ,they end up slowly loosing their teeth ,their hair,their hearing,and then finally they die,just a precious memory. It is coming to us all ,whither we like it or not,as they say at the commital service,'earth to earth,ashes to ashes,dust to dust'.So that's it?, no it goes on to say,as regards those who have trusted Jesus as their Saviour,''in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,through our Lord Jesus Christ,so that's it?no for it goes unto say,'through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our earthly body, that it may be like unto His glorious body'.Is that it? no, for in our new body we will be ussered into the eternal glories where nothing will die, in fact death will have died.

                                              'What creative possibilites awaits us in the

                                               unfolding of the eternal ages no present

                                               imagination can begin to unravel.'

                                                                Bruce  Milne.

Bitterness. ( Hebrews 12 v15)3

 We will carry on looking at the book of Ruth and the lessons we can learn,we now look at Chap 1 v 19 -20.Namoi and Ruth have arrived at Bethlehem, it caused a bit of a stir ,can this be Namoi ,they asked?,Her reply was this,'Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter ', Naomi's name means ,'pleasantness,now she calls herself Mara, which means bitter,because of all she had suffered. Consider all she suffered,she had to uproot and go and live in a foreign land, the first tragedy was the death of her husband,well she still had her two sons they had married two Moabite girls,'Orpah and Ruth, so things weren't to bad,but then tragedy struck again,her sons died. So that meant she was left  with no means of  support.She describes her experience like this ,'I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty',( 1 v21)The bitterness she experinced was like drinking vinegar,but a whole lot worse,she was not bitter at the Lord, but the cup that she had to drink was bitter,even though it was from the Lord. Yes it was all from the Lord,are you surprised at that,well we shouldn't be, Sometime His discipline can be severe, but whatever God puts us through,He has his reasons, commenting on Hebrews 12v 5-6 someone writes,  'My dear child,don't shrug off God's discipline,but don't be crushed by it either.It's the child He loves that He disciplines,the child He embraces,He also corrects'.

                                                     'Every joy or trial falleth from above,

                                                     Traced upon our dial by the Son of Love,

                                                                  'Words F.R,Havergal'

                                                 

                                                      

They are watching.(Acts 16 v 22- 25 )2

 So Naomi decides to go back home,but she  was a considerate woman,and she looked at her two daughter-in-laws,and spoke to them urging them to go back to their mothers home,she kissed them goodbye,but they were reluctant to leave,asking her  to let them return with her to her people. Again she reasoned with them,they were both crying,Orpah decided to return, so she  kissed Naomi and left,but Ruth clung to Naomi refused to leave and this is what she said  'Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.Where you go I will go and go,and where you stay I will stay.Your people will be my people and your God my God.Where you die  I will die, and there will I be buried.May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so s'everely, if even death separates you and me.( Ruth1 v16-17)  Ruth is no longer talking like a gentile,but like a child of God, It does not record when the change came,but it is obvious that the godly family she had married into had made a deep impression on her ,she grew to love her mother-in-law,but also to leave her false religion.She had lived with Naomi,had witnessed  as one writer puts it ,'Nomi's experience of grace through affliction as a persuasive testimony '.How we endure in our trials  can have a  profound affect on the Ruth's of this world.People are watching us not so much in our prosperity,but in our trials, may God help to be a Naomi.

                                                     'Let us be a light shining in the darkness'