Why We Worship 8

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

 This week  Malachi 3 v 6  brings us the reason to focus on
                  

This means that God is UNCHANGING

He never changes in His being (who He is) or in the promises He makes.

We can change from year to year or from day to day but God does not.


Malachi  ch 3

Says the Lord of hosts.

6 “For I am the Lord, I do not change;
Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
7 Yet from the days of your fathers
You have gone away from My ordinances
And have not kept them.
Return to Me, and I will return to you,”
Says the Lord of hosts.

Also look at verse 7 to see another promise from God and because He has already declared He does not change then we can believe what He says here.

This gives us great stability and we know that we can depend on Him 

at all times 

and 

       in all circumstances.    

 

I am thankful that I serve an unchanging God, are you?

Another Coffee Mug! - A Dose of Encouragement

Many years ago while we were living in America I bought some mugs to have to give as gifts to friends who I thought might need some encouragement. 

They had a picture of a cute little bear with the words

 “Smile! Cause God thinks you’re special and so do I”

                                                                                                  printed on them. 

When we came back to Northern Ireland I had only 

3 left, 

and shortly after that only 

one.  

That was when I decided that I was going to keep the last one for myself because sometimes I need encouragement too.

I brought it out of its box and thought about where to put it.  

You see in the unit in our lounge we had some mugs which the boys had got at the Boy’s Brigade over several years, another from Wales with our daughter Linda’s name on it, one with a picture of Peter Rabbit our son was given as a baby, and others that my husband Fred has accumulated from working trips abroad.  


These are all deemed to be too good or too impractical to actually be used so they are treated as ornaments. 

I could have made a space there for this mug but somehow 

that didn’t seem quite right. 

Then I decided that if the mug was to be an encouragement to me, I should see it often and the best way to do that would be to use it regularly. 

So that is what I have done.  

It is now 2014, and I still have this mug.

It really is nice to make my coffee in this mug and smile 

when I look at the words on it.

Some may think it strange but it brings me a lot of joy to use this mug not only for the message it reminds me of but for the memories of the good friends I had to whom I gave the rest of the mugs. 

          Then one day I was in a lady’s home when she showed me some bibles which she was very proud to have.  She told me the story associated with each bible, why they were important to her and how she liked to keep them in very good condition, even though one of them she informed me was more than 150 years old.  

The problem was, each of these bibles was wrapped carefully in a plastic bag and put away only to be brought out occasionally for someone else to hear the stories.  

This was the only way for her to keep them clean and in good condition.  

I found it very sad to think that even though this lady held fond memories of the people she had got these bibles from or the places from which she had received them, and had a special high regard for these as old books; she didn’t read them and she didn’t make use of them so she couldn’t be encouraged by the words within or come to know the joy of meeting the Saviour they offered her.  

It was like my mug. 

If I had kept it ‘good’ I would not have got the enjoyment and encouragement from it that I have got by using it regularly; 

and would I smile and remember that I’m special to God?

I am thankful that my special mug has lasted so long and I am thankful that it brings such good memories and encouragement and joy to me.

Do you have something that does this for you?

 I believe you are special to God too.  Do you?

Why We Worship 7

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

One of the things about God that we may find hard to understand and perhaps never understand fully, but just have to accept that it is true,
 is that 

God 

always has existed 

and 

always will exist

So today I'm thinking about worshipping God because 

We were born and we will die and that is the cycle of life that we understand 

but we are not like God.

He has always existed in the same way: fully and completely as God.

So we must cry

Revelation 4

6 Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. 

7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. 

8 The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”

9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying:  

11“You are worthy, O Lord,To receive glory and honour and power;For You created all things,And by Your will they exist and were created.”

Have you grasped the  "who was and is and is to come" ?

Do you worship Him even though you may not fully understand Him?

The Gift of Love - A Dose of Encouragement

We do not really celebrate ST. Valentine's Day.

My husband and I never got into that as girlfriend and boyfriend except to exchange cards.

Perhaps it was because we were still at school and then at university for the 4 years before we got married, and school kids and students in the 70's did not have money!

Anyway we have never (that I can remember) gone out for a meal or special event for Valentine's Day.
Unless you count last year when we went to the local hotel for a meal with our son and his girlfriend and our daughter.  Seems strange, you may think, to go out with others on that night but we were not going out because of Valentine's Day but because our daughter was due to leave for South Korea a few days later and that was the night we were all free to have a farewell meal together.  I think it may have seemed a bit odd to the hotel as we were the only table not for a couple.

So this year I suggested to my husband that we have a date night on Friday Night, which he knew straight away was Valentine's Day - question still remains how did he know that without thinking?


I then assured him that I was not choosing

                                because it is Valentine's Day

but simply because on



evening we have a meeting at church,

evening we are going to dinner at our son and daughter-in-law's home (the same pair that were only girlfriend and boyfriend this time last year, got engaged at the end of April and married at the end of October & our daughter managed to come back from South Korea for a few days for the wedding),

evening we have a friend round with us for dinner,

evening we have a prayer meeting in church


                                and

we will need to do all the catch-up from the busy week & be tired in the evening and just want to lie in front of the TV and watch something we have taped during the week.


                                   So

 evening was really our only choice.

Next was the question I could have uttered for him myself but I am kind and I let him say it.

"Well what do you want to do?"

I of course should have been prepared seeing as I knew he would say what he always says but I'm silly and I wasn't.

However being determined not to get annoyed at this usual question I sort of looked around me as I tried to think of something quickly and because I was in the kitchen making the dinner at the time I came out with

"You have to cook me a meal all by yourself"

You would have thought I had told him to do something he knew nothing about and had never seen before.

"How am I going to do that?"

This is the guy who taught me to make an omelette when we were students before we got married but now claims he doesn't know how to make one.  This is also the guy who after we got married made the meals on the days that his lectures were over earlier than mine while we were still students and who made all the meals for the few weeks of my final university exams.


Well that really was not how the conversation should have gone!


But even though I was rather annoyed at the usual type of response, and told him so!


That kind of thing was not going to spoil our week or even our day.



We have to remember that when we got married we promised to

                                         

                                                               so something like this cannot get in the way.

A few months ago the ladies who lead our graphics course were developing a magazine for the iPad called  DIY Marketing Graphics and they asked each of the people on the course if they would like to contribute a graphic on the theme of Love for the February Issue.

This was my offering and I was very pleased that they did feature it in the magazine.

I was just playing around with a nice black background and some red hearts and then the wording came to me.

Basically this is what we are doing when we commit to each other in marriage, we are giving our love as a gift to our spouse and we are committed to this forever.  We do not take it back in the hard times or the times (repeatedly) when we annoy each other.  We have given them our love so that overrules all else in any situation.  

This is what God has done with His love.  

He has given the gift of Love which is Jesus, because He loved us and 

He will not take His love back from us either.

I am very thankful that God has shown us true love by His own example.

We all should know the true qualities of Love (if not, we need to read 1 Corinthians 13) and so we know what our actions should be like.  The thing is we are all human and it is hard to get over being hurt and it is hard to accept apologies and it is hard to be gracious and forgiving.  

I am also very thankful that even though Fred & I may take a bit of time to do the forgiving etc. we know we still love each other and such a trust is in our marriage because we know that.

Have you ever thought about your love being a gift that you can give?

Have you thought about God's Gift of Love to you?

Why We Worship 6

I am taking time each week to ask myself "Why we worship"

God has set us all a great example.

He has shown us the way we should be in all the relationships that we have.

He teaches us that we should be faithful in word and in deed.

So our focus today is on    1 Corinthians 1:9

always remembering to take verses we consider in the context they were written

4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, 

5 that you were enriched in everything by Him in all [b]utterance and all knowledge, 

6 even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed [c]in you, 

7 so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

8 who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Not only has He shown us that a relationship must be built on faithfulness but He has also provided the relationship we all need.  

The relationship with our Saviour.

So let us worship today because

We will be singing "What a Faithful God have I " in church today.

Are you worshipping Him today?

  

Who is in Control? - A Dose of Encouragement

Today I'm starting off with a question.

“What are the encouraging words you want to

 hear when you’re having a hard day?"


Sometimes things going on around us get us down and really that is only natural.

One week I had heard about something that really disappointed me.  I was hurt and annoyed that when setting standards for choosing a group of people (in which I was not involved) it was obvious that good ethics had not been taken into consideration.

       

Although I told myself that everything works out for good because God says so in His Word it seems that I didn’t really believe this on that occasion.

          
The next day this was still on my mind and then everything else I was doing was just not going as planned so basically I was having a "bad day".  While driving along in the car I decided to listen to a new CD to take my mind off everything. 

One of the tracks started and I thought that it was just horrible but maybe it would improve.  

As a song it didn’t get much better but then the words really struck me.  

    
Over and over it repeated

“God is in control, God is in control.” 

I played that track many, many times and still I could not say that I liked that song, but God certainly told me then, that He was in control.

There they were, the encouraging words I needed to hear that day.  They may not have been what I would have thought I wanted to hear because in all likelihood I would probably just have wanted someone to agree with me about my bad day - you know coffee and sympathy.

But God knows what we really need to hear even if we should already know it.

Let's remember this passage in Luke chapter 12

22 Then He said to His disciples, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. 

23 Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. 

24 Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? 

25 And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 

26 If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? 

27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 

28 If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?

I am so thankful that God knows us better than we do and I am thankful that God was ready to use this song to to tell me what He wanted me to hear.

  
Do we sometimes need a nudge to remind us of what we already know? 

  Yes I believe we do; to help us really believe it at all times.

Well I still don’t like the song too much but then God doesn’t have to only use the things we like to speak to us, does He?