“God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble”

Psalm 46.1

Trouble!  Often people go through life just waiting for the next disaster!  It should not be so for the born again Christian!  Better to choose our fight and choose our struggle.

“Let thine eyes look right on…”

Proverbs 4:25-27

Let thine eyes look right on,

and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.

Ponder the path of thy feet,

and let all thy ways be established.

Turn not

to the right hand nor to the left:

remove thy foot from evil.

Proverbs 4:25-27

“…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment…”

Hebrews 9.27

The pastor of a Baptist church was in the hospital with a terminal illness.  He had spent many years serving the Lord, visiting people who were sick and dying, and now he said to the younger pastor sitting with him, “It’s one thing to sit on that side of the hospital bed, it’s another to be the one in the hospital bed facing death.”

“And they became a sign”

Numbers 26.10

Here in the Book of Numbers the Lord is reminding the children of Israel about some men who stood up against God.  They had decided that God got it wrong when He chose Moses and Aaron to be the leaders of Israel.  The whole verse says, “And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up together with Korah, when that company died, what time the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men: and they became a sign.”

“Whom having not seen, ye love;”

1 Peter 1.8

What a statement…  Could Peter be talking about me too?

It is nearly the New Year, the “Year of our Lord 2019”, and I must ask myself, “Do I love the Lord Jesus Christ?”

“Whom having not seen, ye love;”

Even though I have never seen Him, I can love Him.

“Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing…”

“Beloved now are we the sons of God,

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that,

when he shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

1 John 3:2

We are pilgrims in this world, and we need to keep that in mind.

We are only passing through.  But yet, right now – those who have been ‘born again’, - we are right now the sons of God!

“…now are we the sons of God”

“...in the way...”

Genesis 24.27

This is from an earlier bulletin and I often need this reminder!

Have you ever felt like you were just - “in the way”?

Life bustles this way and life bustles that way and you’re neither here nor there, you’re just “in the way”!

Sometimes that is exactly where we need to be - as born again Christians - “in the way”!

“Go to the ant...”

Proverbs 6.6

In Proverbs 30:25 we read this, “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat 

in the summer;”.

It has been said that there are some 1 quadrillion ants in the world!

Here is what that number would look like:

1,000,000,000,000,000

So, some 1 quadrillion ants in the world, and all of them preparing for Winter, as the above verse leads us to believe - “ants... prepare their meat in the summer”.

“According to all that I shew thee after the pattern…”

Exodus 25:9

People will soon be looking at what they want for Christmas.  Online, in the shops, the “junk mail” – so many things trying to “show us” what we want.  God also has blessings that He is trying to show us… “According to all that I shew thee after the pattern…” and what He shows us is settled in heaven!

Proverbs 28:5

What do we know?  And, what do we understand?  I was struck by this thought, these questions, recently while thinking about Elisha and the above verse.

First, there were things that Elisha, the man of God, did not know. “And the man of God said, Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the LORD hath hid it from me, and hath not told me. (2 Kings 4:27b)