May 9, 2019
Dear friends,
Last night, Karen and I, along with our daughter, Bethany, were watching a programme on television, when we recognized one of the characters, but we couldn’t remember her name. Thanks to the Internet, Karen discovered where we had seen Jasmine Guy before on television. Although her voice was the same as I remembered it from many years ago, her facial features had changed. It is encouraging to realize that God knows our name and longs for us to have a personal relationship with Him, beginning with repentance from sin and growing in faith as we walk with Him.
At the men’s retreat that I attended at the end of April, we studied the apostle Paul’s letter to the believers in Ephesus. Frank Cirone, an excellent Bible teacher with Torchbearers International – https://torchbearers.org/, shared many helpful insights from this epistle, including this outline: In chapters 1 to 3, believers are exhorted to worship the God of privileges and in chapters 4 to 6 to walk in the responsibility of the privileges. Frank urged us: “Don’t allow your past to define you, but allow God to use your past to refine you.” As I turned 64 last month, I remembered the Beatles’ song with its catchy melody. The key question in that song is “Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m 64?” We may lose friends and family members as we grow older, but we know that the Lord will never leave us or forsake us. He has blessed us with brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world and we will spend eternity praising the Lord in heaven!
One of my favourite worship songs is “Open the Eyes of my Heart” which contains the line “Pour out your power and love, as we sing holy, holy, holy.” You can listen to this at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fadU7b9aa78. In the notes of my NIV Study Bible, the following description of the last section of Ephesians 3 is given: “Paul now expresses a prayer that grows out of his awareness of all that God is doing in believers. God’s key gifts are “power” (vv. 16, 18, 20) and “love” (vv. 17-19). May we show forth the majesty of God in all that we say and do!
Scripture for the weekend: “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.” Ephesians 3:14-15 (NIV)
Thought for the weekend: “Two thousand years ago Paul said that the Jews were looking for miracles. The Greeks were seeking after wisdom. Not much has changed, has it? People are still looking for instant solutions, chasing after astrologers and gurus and therapists and counselors, but Christianity still has only one story to tell – it’s an old, old story: Jesus died for you. Trust him.” – Elisabeth Elliot Leitch – from her message at Urbana ’76
By His grace,
Steve