You Have the Keys.
Bible in One Year for Day 23
Nicky G begins by recounting Sully’s successful emergency landing in the Hudson River, for which he was give the keys to the city of New York. We, as Christians, have been give the keys by Jesus the key holder. “Jesus has brought about a far greater salvation than any other person could achieve. The authority he holds is also the greatest there could ever be – he holds the keys of life and death.”
“Amazingly, Jesus gives to Peter and the church (that is, to us) ‘the keys of the kingdom’ (Matthew 16:19). Many Christians feel powerless, lacking in any kind of spiritual authority. They do not seem to realise what Jesus has given to them. You are not powerless. You have the immense privilege of having been given ‘the keys of the kingdom’.”
From June 2021.
A member of the Mens’s Bible Study asked some questions this that got me thinking. My daily devotions with Nicky Gumbel’s Bible in One Year has some answers for us. Day 145 is titled. How to Face Giant Problems.That will be the focus on this coming Thursday’s study at 7:00 pm Arizona/Pacific time. In preparation for the study, please review the following:Psalm 67:1-7John 15:1-16:41 Samuel 16:1-17:37 If you want to review the Bible in One Year referenced above, click on the link below.
Originally posted May 2021 Some of us have been doing Nicky (Alpha) Gumbel’s Bible in One Year. It is a huge blessing. I particularly like what he wrote about the resurrection of Lazarus and the parallels that has with the Church. Nicky writes,” As a result of the coronavirus epidemic, our world has been shaken. All our assumptions are shattered. Almost everyone, each in our own way, has been dealing with fear, grief and trauma. However difficult your situation may be – however much ‘trouble’ you are facing in your life, you can have hope. Hope is the confident expectation of God’s ultimate blessing in this life and the life to come, based upon the goodness and promises of God. With Jesus, there is always hope.Like Lazarus in our New Testament passage for today, some parts of the church have been prematurely declared dead. In his book, The Death of Christian Britain, Callum Brown writes, ‘This book is about the demise of the nation’s core religious moral identity. As historical changes go, this has been no lingering and drawn-out affair. It took several centuries (in what historians used to call the Dark Ages) to convert Britain to Christianity, but it has taken less than forty years for the country to forsake it.’We often read headlines such as, ‘Crisis in the Church’, ‘Dramatic decline in attendance’ and ‘Church attendance figures fall again’.At the same time, today, we are seeing the results of a society that is attempting to shut God out. Every day, in Britain, around 300 couples are divorced. Somebody calls the Samaritans every fourteen seconds. The pornographic industry is worth billions of pounds. There are 30,000 Christian clergy of all types, and more than 80,000 registered witches and fortune tellers.Britain is not the only nation in trouble. Many other nations are going through difficult times. As well as on a national level, all of us are likely at some point to face times of trouble in our own individual lives.‘Trouble’ can take many forms. What is your hope in times of trouble?
Who is God? July 20, 1997
No one has seen God at anytime. What therefore is God like, what is God’s personality, attributes, character? The quick answer is
GOD IS LOVE
And what that love is and how it is expressed is revealed to us through the Bible and best expressed to us through Jesus Christ Our Lord. If you want a quick summary of God’s nature, who God is, what God is like; you will find it summed up in two words:
JESUS CHRIST
Look at him and how He lived his life, what he taught and did and you’ll get a picture, a big picture of God the Almighty. Our God is not small. Or God is Big.
On the news these days we constantly hear about outer space exploration. We are getting some idea of what the Cosmos is, how it began and what it is made up of. I wouLD like to suggest that at the very centre of theniversie, is God, and that means at the very heart of the universe is love. For God is love. Let’s explore some of the implications that. And the way I like to describe it is with a diagram — what I call the Wheel of Love.
Our epistle read this morning is from Ephesians. That has been called rightly the Epistle of the Cosmos, and in it is a description of the Cosmological Christ. And I’ll draw upon Ephesians this morning as a basis for my diagram of the Wheel of Love.
There are more spokes to the Wheel than this as the wheel is multi-spoked.
