A Heart Untroubled

Today as we are preparing for an excellent church service, I was thinking about why we go to church.  During the last 18 months, we've been locked down, and online church has created many wonderful opportunities for believers to stay connected when meeting together was not possible.  However, now that church are coming back in person, there are many people that still think that it's ok to stay in their pjs and watch the service from their living room, or catch up later if the weather's nice and they can go off for a walk instead of attending the service. There are multiple reasons why I think that going to church in person is an absolute necessity, but one of the lesser discussed reasons for that is because I truly believe what Paul told us in Corinthians and Romans, when he tells us that we are part of a body, and that we each have gifts, and we should be bringing them into the church setting to minister to and encourage one another.  If you're sitting at home watching

Balance!   It's a word the Lord gave me many years ago, and it keeps coming up in my life and walk with the Lord. This week I was thinking about the balance of peace and trust.  There are things in life that are on a metaphorical scale. One goes up and something else goes down. Peace is on one side of the scale and self-reliance is on the other. When we trust in the Lord, our peace level goes up,  when we trust in ourself or something other than Jesus, our peace will decrease.   It sounds obvious, but it's about trusting God do what he says he will, and letting go of the stress and worry about how we are going to fix it, control it or change it, will bring us peace.  Being a Christian is all about realizing we can't do it ourselves.  It starts with the fact we can't pay for our own righteousness, and is all about the truth we can't really make it in life ourselves, no matter how strong, competent, rich or intelligent we think we are.  There are always people and cir

Just a short thought today. What drives you?  That's it!  Everyone is driven by something.  What moves you to read the bible, or pray or worship God?  Sometimes we are driven by the problems we face.  Something happens that is negative, challenging or sad, and we turn to Christ for an answer.  That is ok, but what is better is when we are driven by our knowledge of the love of God, and his wonderful promises to us.  When we know God's love and we know his promises, we will worship, pray and desire the word. It's a bit of a catch 22 though.  If you don't know how much you are loved, and what God has promised you, you can't respond to or live in that love.  To know God's love you need to be in the word, talking to the Lord (praying), and listening to his voice.  If you know that you are driven by external things, then you will struggle; one crisis to another things will come your way, but there is great peace and security in knowing that we are loved, and reading

I 've been talking about the divine exchange; what Jesus took from us on the cross and what he gave us in return.  What an amazing deal from our perspective.  He has given us so much, and yet so many Christians are ignorant of what belongs to us or they chose not to walk in the blessings and promises of God.  If we continue to look at Isaiah 53 (KJV), we see in verse 5 it reads: But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. This week I want to mention the 'peace' noted here.  Quite often we think of peace as the absence of stress or strife, but in the Hebrew, the word used is 'shalom' and it means SO much more than this.  Olive Tree Enhanced Strong's Dictionary defines it as: completeness, soundness, welfare, peace, completeness, safety, soundness (in body) welfare, health, prosperity, peace, quiet, tranquillity, contentment, peace, friendship of human