Bible Verses Used

Colossians 3: 12~17

Matthew 7: 1~5

Luke 6: 27~38

Romans 2: 1

James 4: 11~12

Romans 14: 10

We need to put our roots down deep in God. There are surface roots, but if there’s no rain, the plant will wither and die. The first time a storm comes along, you are in deep yoghurt. Put your roots down deep. God looks at our ♥♥♥ ~ you can’t do without God’s love.

Let love guide your life; then the whole church will stay together in perfect harmony. We are the church. There are many people who have their “church persona” and the “rest of their life persona”. We need to have the same persona throughout the whole week.

Jesus commandments are:~

• Love God.
• Love others.

You can’t be a God~lover and not love others. The human tendency is to stand on the sidelines and not to pitch. We are not to judge others, for with the measure with which we judge others is the measure with which we will be judged. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Who are you to judge your neighbour? When you criticise someone else, you are going where you are never meant to go. How many times have I sat in judgement? If a person’s drowning, they will push you under in order to save themselves. There is no excuse for pushing someone down in order to elevate yourself.

We are to pray for our enemies. Criticism is the major instrument that Satan uses to destroy the church. Peace, harmony and unity are what God wants within our church today. Unless your roots are down deep, it is easy to go Satan’s way. There is a narrow way or a broad way ~ the broad way is the easiest way.

Gossiping is passing on information when you are not a part of the problem or a part of the solution. People who will gossip to you will also gossip about you. People who gossip cannot be trusted with your confidences. The greatest wounds come from other sheep, not from the wolves. Gossip is not meant to be a part of our lives. When people gossip, they are destroying harmony and unity within the church. If they are gossiping, confront them with this. We each have talents and abilities, and the church needs each one of us. God blesses churches that are united. God is looking for a church that will build and strengthen believers.

People are looking for acceptance and love when they come to our church, a church where every person can be:~

• Accepted
• Loved
• Valued

Leaders and pastors are not perfect, but they need your support and prayers to build the church that God wants. We want God to be welcome to walk into our church, and we need to work together.

No matter what comes, we shall stand and we shall build the church that God wants.

Today’s Tuesday Treasure is a gift that was given to us when we moved into our third home by my husband’s second cousin, Jim and his wife, Peggy. It sits on our kitchen mantlepiece, and is a constant reminder that God’s blessings do crown our house. It has been securely packaged during every move since then, and it has survived four moves, even the last move when the furniture removalists all but destroyed lots of our furnishings and fittings – clothes drier, table and five of the six chairs, dressing table, strereo player and nebuliser. Take my advice – if you’re moving house, pay the extra for the insurance, for if you don’t, you will be severely out of pocket.

Today’s “treasure” is not an expensive one, but it has much sentimental value for us, and is a constant reminder of God’s blessings over our home, that our work is blessed and that our house is prospered by the Lord.

Today my daughter finished her school work early, and I had promised her that if she finished early, we would start on her longstitch. We bought this longstitch for her about three years ago, and it has taken me all of that time to pluck up the courage to be able to start it.

If you have been told all of your life that you can’t do anything, you’ll never amount to anything and that you’re no good, then you’re set up for failure your whole life, and your confidence takes a very real battering. It takes a lot of determination and trust, both in God and in self to break out of that whole cycle of self-doubt, but that is exactly what I have done (through God) today.

By doubting self, I was doubting God and His ability to change me, and also doubting the promise in His Word that says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”. I have taken hold of that promise, and today my daughter and I started on that longstitch – it wasn’t easy, as I have never been taught how to do anything in the way of stitch work, but we managed to make a start on it, and I feel good. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

How can I tell our children that they can do all things through Christ which strengthens them if I dare to doubt what He says in His Word? I can now look them straight in the eye and tell them that they can do all things through Christ which strengthens them, knowing that I have walked the path of trust first.

We thoroughly enjoyed tackling the starting of this project, and it has given me a degree of self God confidence, knowing that I can do things that I haven’t tried before.  I  have taught my daughter how to do it, and she has now taken over, with me supervising. My daughter did all of the brown area, and I’m so happy, and so is she. We just need to have the confidence to take that first baby step…

Image from here

Curiouser and curiouser – today I went to the physio, and he told me that I have not one disc bulge, but four – ahem, I had thought that this was going to be easy to remedy the disc bulge, but four of them are going to be a trifle more difficult. The posterior (bulging backward) disc bulges that I have are L2, L3 and L5, while the anterior (bulging forward) disc bulge is L4.

At the moment, the physio has given me one exercise – lying face down with three pillows under my tummy. Treatment consists of ultrasound once a week, with hot wheat packs in between to ease the inflammation. On my visit today he said that we will continue on the road that we are on until the muscle pain settles, and then we are going to have to go the opposite way to try and heal the posterior disc bulges.

It seems that when I fell down the cellar steps, I really did a ‘good’ job of hurting my back. Little things, such as putting the nebuliser into the boot of the car bring on intense pain;  it’s not until you I do something, and it causes intense pain that I realise how much damage I have done.

One thing that I do know, and that is that God allows certain illnesses to happen for His glory.

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. John 9: 1-3

I need to have a voice of thanksgiving, but this is not easy unless I draw on God’s strength, and then, and only then will He give order and meaning to my life. I need to draw on God’s strength, and know that His grace is sufficient for me. We are told to glory in our infirmities, and that God will use the weaker vessel for His glory – that’s me!

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. 2 Corinthians 12: 9, 10

Lord, I am willing to be used for Your purpose – take me, use me, mould me, shape me to achieve your purposes here on earth! I need to remember that God works all things together for our good, and I need to give Him my thanks, no matter what happens, even if I don’t understand the “why” right now. Trusting God means that I am not drawing on my own understanding, for it is not for me to understand – God is our omniscient (all-knowing) Creator God, and I lay my life in His hands.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

There was a Scottish painter named  Smokey Macgregor who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.

As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings..

Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.

So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine..

Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Smokey clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint..

Smokey was no fool. He knew this was a judgement from the Almighty, so he got down on his knees and cried:

“Oh, God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke..

“Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”

People who live outside Vietnam think that there is freedom of religion within Vietnam, but if you really want to find out whether that is true, you need to walk in the shoes of the members of the persecuted church.

Christians in Vietnam live between two “tigers” – Communism and Buddhism/tribal religions, and no matter which way they turn, there is a “tiger” threatening them. Do they stop worshipping Jesus? No! They travel the lonely roads, face police interrogation and prison, and they do it all with a sense of joy and accomplishment, knowing that Christ’s power rests upon them.

Vietnam is a small country in Indochina, which has suffered greatly and been wounded by various wars. The people have felt that their lives were being sacrificed to Communism, and at about the same time, Buddhism was brought in from China, with pagodas, shrines and temples adorning every home. Superstitious religious rites were practiced with regularity.

Communism began around 1954 and the churches persecution still continues today, although the North is more heavily persecuted than the South. The Christians who remained in the North after Vietnam was split had their Bibles confiscated and they had their crosses destroyed. Atheism and Darwinism was taught, while newspapers spread false information about believers. In the North, churches are even told what they can preach, and the pastors are controlled by the government.

House churches are one way that the North Vietnamese Christians can spread the Word of God, but there are harsh penalties – imprisonment and severe beatings for anyone caught with a Bible and preaching the Word of God. Most of these house churches contain ten to twelve people who have continued meeting like this for months, and in some cases, years. Today Vietnam is a place where Jesus Christ is changing the course of history. The gospel is being preached all over the land, and the land is ripe for the harvest.

There are many stories of extreme persecution within this book, and real Christians endure such hardships that it makes me shudder, knowing that these people are willing to give their all for their love of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spreading of the Gospel. Bibles are still in short supply in Vietnam, and the Vietnam Christians guard their Bibles with their lives, sometimes burying Bibles so that they will not be confiscated. People borrow Bibles so that they can learn of the love of God and instill His Word into their ♥♥♥.

Some Christians pedal 40 kilometres to preach their sermons (Gulp!), and they spend whatever money that they have to photocopy tracts and encourage people to read them. Once they have read the tract, they return it and receive a new one. We can only imagine the hardships that they endure, to bring others to the saving grace of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God that there are Christians in Vietnam prepared to give their all so that others can learn of the love of God! This is an excellent book, and one that I can heartily recommend.

Bible Verses Used

John 3:16Philippians 2:6-8


John 14: 1-4

John 3:16 underpins everything that happened to Jesus – the Cross, the crucifixion and the empty tomb. We are the “why” that happened. Jesus died for You! When Jesus stood before Pilate, He said,

For this reason I was born.

You could substitute your own name for “this reason“, and maybe then you would realise how important you are to Jesus. What was behind the extraordinary reason? You were! Jesus left everything that He had in heaven, just for you. It was all for You!

He was crucified for you, the stone was rolled away from the tomb for you, and when the stone was rolled away, it showed Jesus’ love for You. Regardless of who you are or what you’ve done, Jesus died for You!

You could be the most despicable, vilest, most hateful person and yet, He died for You. You are no less important to Jesus than anyone else. He died for the world. The flash houses of today would look like ramshackle beach shacks compared with what Jesus left behind when He came to earth.

Dr Maxwell Maltz was a renowned plastic surgeon, and He saw a woman whose husband was severely disfigured in a house fire trying to rescue his parents. The husband’s face was horribly disfigured, but he refused Dr. Maltz’s offer to help restore him to some degree of normality. His wife came back to see Dr Maltz, and he was surprised because he knew that her husband had refused his help previously. This time she asked Dr Maltz how much it would cost for him to disfigure her face like her husband’s, so that her husband would let her back into his life. Jesus was severely and callously beaten for us, tortured with the Crown of Thorns, flogged, mocked, spat upon and hanged upon the Cross at Golgotha where He endured the agony of the Cross for You, and all that He wants is to be allowed into your life.

The Cross is a universal symbol of Christianity, and yet we would never wear a guillotine around our neck, but we proudly wear the Cross which was the ultimate persecution that Jesus endured just for You! How did a symbol of torture become something of beauty?

The arms of the Cross show:~

Horizontal Band – The Breadth and Length of God’s Love

Vertical Band – The Depth and Height of God’s Love

The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows God’s Love for You! Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the gift of Your love.

Jesus, You showed us Your love through the Cross, the empty tomb and Your scarred body.

I pray that you unshakeably take hold of God’s Love for You.