Everyone smokes

Click on the words in pink to find the passage in the Bible that this is based on.

God wants everyone to trust that He will live up to the name of Jesus - God saves.

Everyone smokes is trending on twitter at the moment. God showed men smoking 2500 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel saw men putting the branch to their nose. It was a part of the act of turning their backs on God's temple, which means they were ignoring God. The reason God got angry then and gets angry today is that people who have had many opportunities to believe and trust Him just don't do it! Then they moan and worry and get stressed and need a fag, when they could turn to Him in faith and trust.

• Our Father in heaven
• Holy is Your name
• Your Kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
• Give us this day our daily bread
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
• Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil.
• For yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory

This is a prayer that many people know, Jesus taught us to pray it in secret. We are not to wait until we go to church, but to pray when we need to. For example, it is silly to worry when we can turn to Him for strength and the answer to our problems. So we need to be forgiven and to forgive other people when they act like us.
It is so simple why oh why don't more people do it.

You can come back here for more simple ways to tune into God and get His help at this blog on most days.

God dreams of people believing in Him

Click on the words in Pink and a passage from the Bible will appear in a new tab.

God dreams of people believing in him, being proud and standing tall in their faith.

“‘I said, How I would set you among my sons,
and give you a pleasant land,
a heritage most beautiful of all nations.
And I thought you would call me, My Father,
and would not turn from following me. (Jeremiah 3:19 ESV)

It is perhaps odd to think of God doing something as human as dreaming but remember we are created in his image not the other way around. Jeremiah 3 is all about God's dream of his people Israel returning to him and all the peoples of the earth knowing and worshipping him and all calling him father. This dream is mirrored with the dream of the people to be prosperous and living in a peaceful and abundant land. This multi layered dream is the background to the Bible, it goes something like this, God dreams of fellowship with his creation so he created men and women, those men and women dream of the abundant life, God sees these dreams and hopes that man's dream will include him. It is a roundabout of hope, God sent his Son Jesus to be our Saviour and to give mankind a way of dreaming faith dreams but for some reason mankind refuses the dream. Will something as simple as a blog be a means of refreshing that dream in mankind?

God wants people to be proud of being Christian and to stand tall in their faith. He wants us to be strong enough to withstand the mockery of non believers. He wants a readiness to answer for our faith and the strength of character to stand our ground. These things can only happen when we are dependant on him when we not only know our need of him but refuse to act without his strength. This is the meaning of the passage we have looked at before blessed are poor in spirit. You will notice that the same reward is reserved for the poor in spirit as it is for the persecuted, the kingdom of heaven is theirs. This is the New Testament dream of God, that people will dream of God and will act out their dream with a whole heart. Lets do it.

Forgive me as I forgive others

Please click on the words in pink and verses from the Bible will pop up in a new tab. This is to show you that I am not just making this stuff up.

I have woken this morning thinking about the times in my life I have fallen short of what I think God expects of me. You will  notice that the Bible uses two different words here to describe our sins, the more familiar trespasses and debts. Debts in the Greek means to fail in ones duty towards and is more to do with religious and moral failings, while trespasses means to fail to do what you want to do or to behave in a way you want others to. So Jesus covered all ideas of sin in covering our failing to live out our faith in terms of our religious behaviour as well as in our relationships with other people.

Jesus called his followers to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect which is both impossible and something to really work on. Earlier in the same chapter Jesus called to remember that we are spiritually poor because then we will know God's blessing. This means that as we acknowledge our own inability to live up to God's expectations and remember that no one can do it! So we forgive others and receive our own forgiveness and we will be on the road to perfection.

I personally reckon that this is wonderful and try to make it true in every part of my life. If someone behave in a way that I don't like I reckon that they can't help it and so forgive them. Easier to do sometimes than others. But it is so much less burdensome than blaming them for their behaviour and letting a rift appear in a relationship. God wants us to get along with each other and to leave the detail of the changes in our behaviour to him. He will change us in the big things as we let go of the little things.

There is no harm in praying for someone I forgive him/her for ***** please change them so they no longer behave life this. Jesus was asked by the Apostle Peter how many time should I forgive my brother when he sins  against me? In the Greek a third word is used for sin, it means missing the mark and even not winning the prize. This is a very high level of expectation for one person to have of another. It is like saying my brother has not lived up to every inch of my expectation, what should I do. You should know that the number 7 represents a very high number but Jesus says not 7 times but 77 which means you should go on forgiving without counting.

So please practice forgiving those near you and those who come across your path and then you will be forgiven.

Unemployment - What would Jesus do?

Unemployment is a worldwide problem, it is challenging all societies from rich to poor. It is as if mankind needs to find a new way of giving people the means to live. As we hear the speeches of politicians we here the ringing of voices spoken in a vacuum, they have nothing to say. As both China and the USA develop through the phases of their industrial revolutions they are finding unemployment a growing problem, everyone needs a solution.

It seems simple to say we have no alternative to being dependant on the God who made us and who saves us. I have told you in a earlier post that the name of Jesus means God saves. The God who saves is ready to help in time of trouble as it says in Psalms 46. The Old Testament has a number of names for God which are really descriptions thus in Psalm 46 we have Eloheem which is translated as God and means supreme and Jehovah which is translated as the Lord and means eternal. So from the Hebrew language God is described as the Supreme Eternal Being who can tackle all of your problems. That God is determined to be exalted in the earth and we are waiting for this to happen.

When we pray "Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" we can have in mind both this grand vision as well as our personal need. God is interested in us as he is in everyone, he says to call him Father. We need a revelation of a new way of giving people the food and water they need. In England and many other places we need lots of gentle rain to break our drought. We do not need that heavy torrential downpour that brings floods and runs straight off the land. We need God to be gentle with us and kind towards us and to reveal his ways to us. We in our turn need to accept that the Jesus we learnt about in our youth is the only Saviour we are going to get and that it is His teaching that we are to put into practise.

Being a good parent

With the day to day responsibility of being a parent comes the temptation to worry. Watching children grow, the words of other people undermining your decisions, comparing your child with children of a similar age and many other parts that make up being a parent all give opportunity to worry. The Bible instructs its readers do not worry but give thanks and pray asking God for what you need and peace will fill your hearts. This is a wonderful truth, peace follows prayer, so we might ask "for how long do we pray?" The answer is until you get peace, it will always come and often quicker than we expect.

When the baby cries and you've done all the practical things to help give thanks that's what Holy is your name is short for in the Lords prayer. The child can't pray for him/her self so you pray your kingdom come your will be done it this life as it is in heaven. Then develop this phrases as you think about the child's life. Peace will soon come, I remember when I was a young parent being called to extra prayer in this way on many occasions, our children became quiet as we prayed for whatever came into our minds. Sometimes this prayer would concentrate on our own child, sometimes the thoughts would go wider and we would find ourselfs praying for other things, it was always much better than worry.

This is extra prayer, in the normal course of events God wants us the pray continually, that is when ever we have a spare moment, pray. It is a good habit to get into if we are with friends who share our belief we might pray together an out loud. The first time we do these things is always the most difficult, that is why we've been given the Lords prayer. It is a model of prayer, it gives prayer a shape, I hope you enjoy doing it, it will give you such a peace that you will wonder at it.

After you have prayed and received God's peace leave a comment, it is the place for your testimony to encourage others in the way of God as revealed through Jesus Christ.

Godparents

Lots of us are asked to be Godmothers or Godfathers, it is something that makes us feel special and nervous. On the day of the Baptism we have to stand up in front of the congregation and speak our lines out loud, then we want to care for our Godchild and don't know what to do. I thought I would offer an idea of how to support these children and make a difference in their lives.  If this is the first time you have read this blog it's aim is to encourage you to make the Lords prayer something you do naturally and often.

Where you see a word in Pink if you click on it a link will open up in a new tab.

Instead of saying the Lords prayer off quickly, I am suggesting that we take each phrase and develop it.  So when we say or think your kingdom come we can add your kingdom come in Alison's life (name your own Godchild). When we pray your kingdom come we think of the best that life could offer and we pray it into being. We believe that God's kingdom is wonderful and remember it is just what we want for ourselves and for our futures. Then as we pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven we are praying for peace, friendship, love, patience, health to surround our Godchildren.

We carry on making these prayers until we have peace, we can pray it quietly at any time of the day or night. I like doing it while waiting at the bus stop or sitting in a traffic jam or during the adverts on TV. You see we don't have to wait until we are in church to pray, we try to remember to pray in the spaces we get when we could either worry or get some peace.

Come back to this blog again for more thoughts on the Lords prayer.

Binge Drinking 2

Click on a word in pink and you will find a few verses from the Bible in a new tab.

I need to say more about drink. I'm sorry that the Church judges people who drink when it is really none of their business. The Church has rules and it really should keep them to itself, the Bible says to Christians don't get drunk but to the outsider it says do get drunk; God still loves you even if you don't believe in him alcohol is his forgetting medicine. Proverbs 31 We are used to rejecting God because he seems to reject us. He doesn't reject non believers but he includes everyone by giving peace to those who pray and forgetting medicine to those who don't.

Since I discovered that the Bible does not say half the things Christians say it says I have been a happier chap, I don't go to Church but I do try and pray the Lord's prayer whenever I have half a mind to do it. Proverbs says it is not for kings or priests to drink because they might forget their calling. St Peter called the followers of Jesus a royal priesthood with the very special calling to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus. Peter That's a religious way of saying tell you friends and neighbours what you've learnt today. That if you pray and believe you will know peace and that someone is in control of your life. Philippians