The Duck &the Devil

Story time....
There was a little boy visiting his grandparents on their farm. He was given a slingshot to play with out in the woods. He practiced in the woods; but he could never hit the target. Getting a little discouraged, he headed back for dinner. As he was walking back he saw Grandma's pet duck. Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck square in the head and killed it.
He was shocked and grieved! In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the wood pile; only to see his sister watching! Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing.
After lunch the next day Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash the dishes" But Sally said, "Grandma , Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen." Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck?" So Johnny did the dishes.
Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fish ing and Grandma said, "I'm sorry but I need Sally to help make supper." Sally just smiled and said, "Well that's all right because Johnny told me he wanted to help" She whispered again, "Remember the duck?" So Sally went fishing and Johnny stayed to help
After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally's; he finally couldn't stand it any longer. He came to Grandma and confessed that he had killed the duck.
Grandma knelt down, gave him a hug and said, "Sweetheart, I know. You see, I was standing at the window and I saw the whole thing, but because I love you, I forgave you. I was just wondering how long you would let Sally make a slave of you."

Thought for the day and every day thereafter?......
Whatever is in your past, whatever you have done... and the devil keeps throwing it up in your face (lying, cheating, debt, fear, bad habits, hatred, anger, bitterness, etc.)...whatever it is ...You need to know that God was standing at the window and He saw the whole thing. He has seen your whole life. He wants you to know that He loves you and that you are forgiven.
He's just wondering how long you will let the devil make a slave of you. The great thing about God is that when you ask for forgiveness; He not only forgives you, but He forgets. It is by God's grace and mercy that we are saved.

When Jesus died on the cross; he was thinking of you!

Share this with a friend and make the difference in someone's life today....and check it out in the Bible: Romans 6v14 and 8v1

You're hired!

I came across this item from LICC:
I sacked Simon Smith. Yep, I gave this week's hapless contestant on The Apprentice his marching orders. OK, the TV evidence is that it was the lovable epitome of all things shrewd and opportunist, Sir Alan Sugar, who fired him - but at least I was there to back up his decision. As part of the studio audience for The Apprentice: You're Fired!, the follow-up show that interviews each week's victim, I got to wave my red card at Simon when the mob was asked how we'd have handled him.
In Sir Alan's opinion, the ex-Army man - currently a satellite engineer - was amiable and industrious but simply out of his depth as a leader in the project he'd been assigned. I heartily agreed and, though I have no proven business acumen myself, I stand by my TV-ordained right to make flash judgements based on the slightest of slanted evidence.
It got me thinking, though. How, when it came to the biggest job on earth - building the kingdom of God - did Simon Peter get hired to provide the foundation? Sure, he was bolshie, spoke his mind and was proactive when it came to exercising faith. But was he the best choice? Could Jesus have chosen only Peter for that position?
As for the rest of the apostles, did they exhibit qualities not found in other fishermen, tax collectors and would-be insurgents? And here's where I have a problem with the Great Commission: Jesus seemed to be telling the Eleven, 'My family business has an aggressive expansion directive. Not only are you hired, I want you to get out there and hire anyone you come across, and train them so they can hire anyone they come across and train them so - well, you get the idea.'
What kind of discernment is that? What kind of business sees fit to hire anyone and everyone and train them to train others regardless of experience?
It seems Jesus had this intention from the start. Right at the outset, his job offer came with a career development package. 'Come, follow me,' he said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.'
For Peter and Andrew, it was about swapping one family business for another. They chose wisely. So did Jesus. Which still leaves me wondering: What is it about you and about me that makes God take one look at us and say, 'You're hired'?
Jason GardnerI sacked Simon Smith. Yep, I gave this week's hapless contestant on The Apprentice his marching orders. OK, the TV evidence is that it was the lovable epitome of all things shrewd and opportunist, Sir Alan Sugar, who fired him - but at least I was there to back up his decision. As part of the studio audience for The Apprentice: You're Fired!, the follow-up show that interviews each week's victim, I got to wave my red card at Simon when the mob was asked how we'd have handled him.
In Sir Alan's opinion, the ex-Army man - currently a satellite engineer - was amiable and industrious but simply out of his depth as a leader in the project he'd been assigned. I heartily agreed and, though I have no proven business acumen myself, I stand by my TV-ordained right to make flash judgements based on the slightest of slanted evidence.
It got me thinking, though. How, when it came to the biggest job on earth - building the kingdom of God - did Simon Peter get hired to provide the foundation? Sure, he was bolshie, spoke his mind and was proactive when it came to exercising faith. But was he the best choice? Could Jesus have chosen only Peter for that position?
As for the rest of the apostles, did they exhibit qualities not found in other fishermen, tax collectors and would-be insurgents? And here's where I have a problem with the Great Commission: Jesus seemed to be telling the Eleven, 'My family business has an aggressive expansion directive. Not only are you hired, I want you to get out there and hire anyone you come across, and train them so they can hire anyone they come across and train them so - well, you get the idea.'
What kind of discernment is that? What kind of business sees fit to hire anyone and everyone and train them to train others regardless of experience?
It seems Jesus had this intention from the start. Right at the outset, his job offer came with a career development package. 'Come, follow me,' he said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.'
For Peter and Andrew, it was about swapping one family business for another. They chose wisely. So did Jesus. Which still leaves me wondering: What is it about you and about me that makes God take one look at us and say, 'You're hired'?
Jason Gardner LICC

A time to be born, and a time to die... Ecclesiastes 3v2

My father-in-law Len’s funeral was on 8th April.

First, let me tell you about another 8th April, a long time ago, which fell on a Good Friday:
At about 1.30am my wife Cindy began to feel a bit uneasy and started wandering around the bedroom. So we got the neighbour to come and look after our little daughter Sarah and drove to Hospital in the firm’s Mini. Cindy didn’t sit on the seat for the whole journey, the traffic lights were all thankfully green. Ten minutes after we arrived, our son Matthew was born. Five minutes later, the call went up… 'Quick, there’s another…' and Stephen came into the world. We went in expecting one baby and came out with two! It was an unforgettable day !

The 8th April this year was also an amazing day…. The little chapel at Huttoft was packed with 200 people (it only holds 150).People remarked later that they had never been to such a funeral. It was a real celebration of Len’s long life. Many memories, yes, but also a resounding affirmation of Christian hope…. ‘Len is now with his Lord’. As Mother-in-law stated when she viewed his coffin the day before… ‘He’s not there, y’know’ and not for one moment did she doubt that we should be celebrating his promotion to glory.

Len’s brother’s funeral was on 22nd February, a number of years ago. It was a sad day for him. He propped himself up in a corner of the church and endured a grim memorial service. He came away thoroughly depressed by the whole thing.
While he was there, Cindy and I had been visiting the hospital again! Joanna was born in the afternoon and Sarah phoned to tell Len and Joyce just as they arrived back from the funeral. Len’s low spirits evaporated and he was full of joy.
Jo was to be the last of his grandchildren…(thereafter great-grandchildren began to appear...no.8 is due next month). It was a day he always remembered and often spoke about.

O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30 v3-5

Learning from Len

My wife Cindy and I were using the time travelling back and forward to Boston and by her dad Len’s bedside for talking about lots of things. He had had a severe stroke on Easter Monday and was later taken to hospital at Boston.
The Morning Worship of the previous day was still in our memories. We talked about how it had come about that I had ended up leading worship at my home church of Winterton (instead of Scotter, 17 miles away) because of the early morning snow of Easter Sunday.
I had preached on 1 Cor 15, especially ‘ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people the most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. 1 Corinthians 15:16-19’ and talked about the sure hope (certainty) that we have of the resurrection of the dead. I had included the following (in italics) in the message:

A dear friend had died. At the funeral service a signer
was present to help some deaf people understand. As the
meeting went on the speaker was frequently using the
word ‘hope’. The sign - it was observed - was crossed
fingers. However the speaker began to talk about
Christian hope - the certainty of life beyond the grave.
And as he did so a different sign was being introduced:
hands clasped together in rock-like certainty.
In the New Testament the word for hope means something that
is in the future which is certain. It is not, as in normal English
usage, something that might happen if we are fortunate. The
rock-like certainty of the New Testament use of the word is what
the signer was communicating at the service.
Peter, who saw the death and resurrection of Jesus, writes
with excitement as well as certainty about our hope.
Praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ! In
his great mercy he has given
us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead,
and into an inheritance that can
never perish, spoil or fade-kept
in heaven for you, who through
faith are shielded by God’s
power until the coming of the
salvation that is ready to be
revealed in the last time.
1 Peter 1:3-5
‘Praise’ is Peter’s word, because we have been born again into a living hope.
Unlike virtually everything in this life, what we have been given
in Christ is something that can never perish, spoil or fade. Our
hope is guaranteed on the basis of Christ’s resurrection from
the dead.
May the God of hope fill you with
all joy and peace as you trust in
him, so that you may overflow
with hope by the power of the
Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13
God is a God of hope. So it is possible to ‘overflow with hope’
says Paul in Romans 15. He gives hope. Christians need
not wallow in gloom or despair. The power of the Holy Spirit
within us is what enables us to exhibit hope. Death is the most
despairing of life’s events. Yet even here, or especially here, it is
possible to have hope for the future. Christians are people who
have a certain and a living hope.
That’s the difference.

I finished the Easter service by introducing one of my favourite hymns, ‘I know that my Redeemer Lives.’
I know that my Redeemer lives; What joy the blest assurance gives!He lives, He lives, who once was dead;He lives, my ever living Head.
He lives to bless me with His love, He lives to plead for me above.He lives my hungry soul to feed,He lives to help in time of need.
He lives triumphant from the grave, He lives eternally to save, He lives all glorious in the sky, He lives exalted there on high.
He lives to grant me rich supply, He lives to guide me with His eye, He lives to comfort me when faint, He lives to hear my soul’s complaint.
He lives to silence all my fears, He lives to wipe away my tears, He lives to calm my troubled heart, He lives all blessings to impart.
He lives, my kind, wise, heavenly Friend, He lives and loves me to the end; He lives, and while He lives, I’ll sing; He lives, my Prophet, Priest, and King.
He lives and grants me daily breath; He lives, and I shall conquer death: He lives my mansion to prepare; He lives to bring me safely there.
He lives, all glory to His Name! He lives, my Jesus, still the same. What joy the blest assurance gives, I know that my Redeemer lives!
I sensed the Spirit reminding me of the reason why I like the hymn, and I said to the congregation that there are two words in this hymn which are MOST important…’I know’.
It is not head knowledge, but heart certainty.
John Wesley had been in the Ministry for years before that day he refers to as his conversion, when he wrote in his journal:
‘I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death’.
That’s it. That's the difference…that assurance... not head knowledge, but heart certainty.
And as we journeyed early last week, we reflected on that.

The really good news gospel

If you are a watcher of the blog of Martyn Atkins, President of the Methodist Conference, I apologise for repeating what you have already seen.
But for the sake of a wider audience....

The really good news gospel - Easter message from the President

Donald English used to say that death and resurrection is not simply what happened to Jesus but is the deep movement God implants in all creation. The Christian God is a God of death and resurrection.

Like many I have been challenged by poignant examples of death - its reality and hard consequences - and blessed by wonderful examples of resurrection - and the hope and joy it brings. I will never forget a conversation with a Sierra Leonian man, bearing the scars of the rebel war in the 1990’s so powerfully depicted in the recent film Blood Diamond. He thanked me fervently for bringing the gospel to his land - he talked to me as if I was one of those first Methodist missionaries to West Africa! He explained with deep emotion how he had received Christ quite recently, in the war years, and this coming to faith had enabled him to begin to forgive those who mutilated him - and, as I learned a little later, killed his wife. I was moved to tears. In all his pain and lasting disability he knew that Jesus was alive, and there was hope in his life. He knew in a deep way that the gospel of Christ truly is good news.

More recently, when in Uganda with MRDF, I met Christian folk who have so little, who live with the reality and proximity of death and suffering in a way I do not, yet who remind me more than most of the life and hope of Christian faith. Death and resurrection belong together.

Or I think of some friends who have died in recent times. They knew their prognosis. They lived with the stark consequences of their impending death, for themselves and especially their loved ones. And at just the time when hope might be most lacking in these dear people and those who love them, they talk of the nearness of Christ, the wonderful love and forgiveness of God, the comfort of their faith, their trust in Jesus, the salvation he freely gave and their hope of heaven. In the most traumatic situations of life, it is often those going through them who embody and make clear that the Christian gospel truly is good news.

Death and resurrection is also evident in the life of our churches. I was at Walworth Methodist Church some weeks ago. A church with a venerable past, ‘Clubland’ had a great ministry among local youths and others in that London neighbourhood. But there came a time when almost all signs of life disappeared, and a long three days of darkness ensued. But resurrection has come and new life bursts out everywhere. Methodist Christians, young and old, many (originally) from various parts of West Africa and beyond, share life and worship that exudes the good news gospel. “Our world lives with death and resurrection in many ways and in many places. An ‘average’ news broadcast gives cause to both weep and rejoice. In places of death and darkness we must continue to weep with those who weep and ‘look for the morning’ as people of resurrection faith and hope. With those who rejoice in life and hope we must celebrate and point to God, the giver of it all.

Our Easter faith is not death or resurrection, it is death and resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is not a reversal of death. It is much more than that. The risen Jesus is known by the scars of crucifixion. He is the Living One Who Died. But now he is alive forever. And, marvellously, he stands today with this needy world in the reality of death and the promise of new life. This ministry he shares with us, his Easter People Church, a people bearing the marks of both death and new life. A people who know and live out the profound truth that death and resurrection life both lie deep in the purposes of God, in whom all things will be well.
Alleluia!

blog of President and Vice-President:
http://www.methodist-presandvp.blogspot.com/

He is not here. He is risen

ON 16 FEBRUARY 1977, Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda had a meeting with President Idi Amin, whose murderous regime he had opposed outspokenly. After the meeting, the Archbishop was driven away, along with two government ministers. Uganda Radio announced that the three of them had been arrested, and the following morning it was stated that they had died in a car accident.
In fact, they had been shot on the orders of Amin. A funeral service planned for the following Sunday was forbidden by the government, and the Archbishop's body was not released. Nevertheless, thousands gathered at the cathedral on Namirembe Hill, and the service went ahead around an open grave.

Standing over the empty grave, Luwum's successor, Archbishop Wani, repeated the message of the angel that we hear at Easter: "He is not here. He is risen!"

"He is not here. He is risen!"

And, according to Matthew, the angel adds: "He is going ahead of you to Galilee."
To seek the risen Christ is about moving on; "to go ahead to Galilee".
to live
in hope..
"Christian hope", Jürgen Moltmann writes, "sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands." "Those who hope in Christ", he continues, "can no longer put up with reality as it is. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present."

Janani Luwum understood that belief in the risen Christ entails a commitment to a better world, to"the Kingdom of God". Such a commitment will mean from time to time challenging the powers that be....resulting in our unpopularity, damage to our reputations, desertion by our friends, and worse. For Janani Luwum, it meant martyrdom.

As they gathered round the empty grave of their Archbishop, murdered and risen, they sang of another world, better than this one at its best. That world, too, is promised, and Moltmann will forgive us for sometimes pining for it. But - one world at a time - it is in this one, this Easter, that we must seek the risen Christ.

thanks to John Pridmore. I have edited and added to his article at http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=53492

The Crunch and The Cross

When America sneezes, the infection quickly spreads through the global financial system. As a result of her recent 'credit crunch', lenders and debt junkies alike worldwide are being crushed by the weight of defaults. Greed has suddenly given way to fear, destroying the market value of major banks that have looked at their reserves and found they have none. Slashed interest rates confront us with the truth that money is not as valuable as we thought.
Writing off - or, if you prefer, forgiving - bad debt is painful, and our global interdependence means we all share the pain. It has become personal for me. No longer is it a distant problem of troubled banks; now it's a friend of mine out of a job. Now it's people I know who can't get a mortgage. My own savings are at risk and shrinking in value.
A fund manager said that the Western financial system needed 'a clean-out of Augean-stable proportions' but added that 'we have no Hercules.'

If only the current crisis were all a legend that a suitably legendary hero could put to right. The problem is that the crisis and the pain it brings are real. And so it's a real hero we need.
That's where God comes in. The greed, deception, fear, denial, guilt and collapse of trust that lie at the heart of the current credit crunch are symptomatic of the crisis at the heart of humankind. This is an all too public and corporate demonstration of a normally private and personal reality. It was to deal with this reality - the reality of sin - that Jesus went to Calvary.
In stark contrast to our desperate attempts to escape liability, on the first Good Friday he willingly embraced the cross, experiencing all the terror and pain of the cosmic 'crunch point'. There, the global bad debt of sin was paid, with the only currency that never devalues:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:19)

Have a blessed Easter!

PS. Don't miss 'ThePassion' ..http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thepassion/

Thanks to Paul Valler (LICC)

avoiding EASTER Saturday

The teacher and writer Alan Lewis used to talk of workshops that he’d led on the theme of Easter. The trouble was, he said, that groups were happy to talk about Good Friday but then they wanted to jump forward to Easter Day as quickly as possible. That long hiatus of Easter Saturday, when Jesus lies alone in a borrowed tomb, was to be avoided.

Was that, Alan wondered, because we simply don’t like talking about death?

And yet, he said, if we believe that God lived in and through Jesus Christ then it’s important for us to think not only about what was happening to Jesus, dead and buried, but what was happening to God… also dead and buried. It’s a tough idea to get your head round – that God, too, experiences death on the cross and “knows how to die”.

Alan came to understand that the God’s aloneness and despair on Easter Saturday is precisely that part of the Easter story that most closely mirrors so much of our own human experience. Three events of the last century, he suggests, bring into focus the sense of despair we so often feel about our world:

Auschwitz....... Hiroshima........ Chernobyl

Three events that represent the possibility of soulless inhumanity, a nuclear winter and, at Chernobyl, “the terrible possibility of planetary death… the ultimate eco-catastrophe”.

“Who and where is God if God’s power and love can sustain such losses and accede to such defeats?” Alan asks. Is God uninterested, absent or dead?

OR

Does such bleakness as we often experience in the world around us, such inhumanity that screams daily from our newspapers, such injustice that we seem powerless to prevent, offer another possibility?

For Alan, despair and pessimism, “the collapse of confidence” and “the abolition of optimism” creates the possibility of a different way of looking at tomorrow. A way not of fragile, shattered optimism but of strong un-killable hope.

“For hope, finding space to flourish in the very absence of optimism, is the courage not to be swallowed by despair but, in frank acknowledgement of rampant evil and negation, to trust in the possibility for life and creativity amid and beyond that malign [super-power], though assuredly not in its denial or avoidance. The very realities which banish confidence and legitimise despair also invite a hopeful embrace of love’s living power to prevail in history.”

Alan liked to say that the only truly authentic Easter hymn was one that begins “Now the green blade rises from the buried grain”. It speaks of hope (not optimism) present in all our Easter Saturdays of death and despair, ready to push through and grow once more in the shape of God’s love.

The question is: if the aloneness and despair of Easter Saturday is precisely that part of the Easter story which most closely mirrors so much of our own human experience why, then, is it the part of the story that Christians most usually skip over?

More Information
Quotations taken from Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday by Alan E. Lewis (published by Wm B Eerdmans Pub Co.)

thanks to the Methodist Church website for this article

Gethsemane

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What was the agony of Gethsemane?
The Son of God sweating blood.
What was the pain he felt deep within
Which tore at every fibre of his being?
Men and women face death each day,
Afraid of the transitory suffering
of the journey to the unknown.
But he knew his destination and purpose.
The joy set before him,
The sure hope which he would cling to
...through the blackness and torture
and the last enemy’s last stand...
contained in the lonely cry
‘Your will, not mine…’

DEFINING and DOING PRAYER

Thanks to Pete Atkins for this Devotional on prayer...Pete is a founder of what is now the nationwide Mission Shaped Ministry Course...I'm on the course, and enjoyed being on the receiving end of this inspired word last night. Don't just read it once...take time with it and let God speak to you as you reflect:

To pray is to breathe
Relationship with our Father in Heaven is what brings us life

both on earth and for eternity;

prayer is one of the gifts from God for expressing and deepening relationship with Him

– without it we die inside,

we are cut off from our source of life

and our souls start to shrivel.

This gift is permission and means to communicate and commune

with the creator of all things,

the redeemer of our souls,

the lover of all mankind,

the King of Heaven.

In prayer we speak and listen,

ask and receive,

are quiet or shout,

pray in words or in silence,

focus on the needs of others

or our own situation,

use what is written

or respond in our own words,

use our mother tongue

or the "tongues of men and angels".

We can sing or say our prayer,

pray wordlessly

or in groans too deep for words.

We can dance out our prayer,

draw it,

paint it,

write it down,

write it in the sand

or encapsulate it in the flame of a candle.

In prayer

we approach the God who loves us

and who draws us nearer;

we acknowledge our dependence upon Him,

our desire to hear Him,

to give thanks to Him,

to pray our confession when we mess up

and to receive again the joy of forgiveness.

Prayer can be …
…a season of devotion

...or a 3 second request for help,

it can be impregnated with intense feeling

or be a cerebral and passionless event.

Prayer can be on our own

or with others.

Prayer can be inspired by nature or beauty

..or by desperation and suffering.

Prayer can be inspired by our own joys, needs or sorrows

..or the difficulties and heartaches of others.

Prayer, like worship, is a way of life

..not an occasional foray into a spiritual realm.

Seeking to see vision fulfilled without prayer

is like going to war with

no strategy,

no map,

no armour,

no weapons

and no communication with headquarters.

But of more importance

is that seeking to see vision fulfilled without prayer

is to seek effect above relationship.

Closeness to Him is what He desires of us most
…it’s what Jesus came and died to restore.

Seek His face before His hand.

Seek the giver before the gift.

In our love for Him and His for us

lies the source of the power

of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom is within us

and only to the extent it has come in us

will the Kingdom come through us.

The Kingdom of God in us is measured by

our submission to the King,

our love for the King,

our likeness to our King,

our relationship with the King,

our communication with the King,

our life of prayer.

In prayer we align ourselves

to the will of heaven

and pull away from the gravity

of our own desires,

our self centeredness,

and our perspective.

In prayer God invites us

to sit beside Him in heavenly realms

and gain His perspective,

share His heart

and commit ourselves

to the accomplishment of His will.

In prayer we can ask

or groan,

or plead

or wrestle,

or agree

for His will to be established,

for His Kingdom to come on the earth

– including in our hearts,

our territory,

our realm of responsibility,

our lives,

our families

and our Churches.

We pray on our own and we pray with those who share our life
We pray

as one of the two or three gathered together in His name

and we pray

as one of the thousand

gathered together to worship the King,

to cry to heaven,

to plead for the nation

or for the future of our children.

To pray is to live
…and to breathe,

and to allow Him

to be our all in all.

Then as we obey in prayer,

we see our dreams unfold,

His love made known,

His Kingdom established,

the captives set free,

addictions broken,

light come in the darkness

and the lost found.
…and as we pray, Heaven comes upon the earth