Pastoral Message (Page 93)

By Not Known Some people say that history repeats itself. I agree. In fact, it repeats itself many times. Look at the Israelites, God has spoken to them many times and yet they seemed not to have understood what God had said about their repeated mistakes and disobedience. God has to repeat his warnings and punishments through his prophets. Positively speaking, history…

By Not Known Football is a beautiful game. Over the past five weeks, the entire planet was treated to one of the best exhibition of this beautiful game. It was a great spectacle for football fans. However, “ugly” gamesmanship had marred it. Gamesmanship in its pureset form means the art of winning games using tactics to gain an advantage over an opponent. In…

By Not Known Mike Markula, a former vice-chairman of Apple Computer once said, “I believe the overall quality of work improves when you give people a chance to fail.“ Among the most vocal and most visible apostles of Jesus was a man named Peter, whose name meant the rock. It meant strength and stability. It meant solid foundation, unshakable. Yet he was one…

By Not Known Like the foolish Galations, some of us cannot accept the fact that we can gain salvation by just taking god at His word! Believing in Christ Jesus who died for our sins and rose again from the dead for our salvation just isn’t good enought! Surely it can’t be that simple – there must be a catch some where. There must be some illegible fine…

By Not Known Have you ever experienced a ‘That’s it!’ moment in your life? It might be that you threw in the towel on a relationship, a job, a deal, or an interest. That can often happen when one party undergoes prolonged frustration of unmet expectations, empty promises, or unfavourable outcomes. Have you been disappointed or vice versa in all these…

By Not Known Some children at a Christian orphanage in Indonesia recently received several boxes of expensive multivitamins at no cost. It all happened through people in our congregation One person had the vitamins. He looked for somewhere to send them. An elder and a deacon had some coincidental…

By Not Known “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, [a] where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” (Eccles 9:10) Most of us can readily divide our lives into various aspects such as employment, hobbies, close family, wider family, friends, studies, Christian growth and service…

By Not Known Our region has seen another natural disaster this week with the earthquake that happened near Yogyakarta. What do we make of these things? Some may see the hand of God in judgement against Indonesia for various evils including resistance to the gospel. Others may see it as a sign of approaching end times and the return of Jesus. They may be right. Or they may…

By Not Known Few lives are all up or all down. For most, life is a mix of ups and downs It was like that for the Old Testament figure of Joseph. He was the great grandson of Abraham. His father played favourites with him. His brothers hated him (Gen 37: 3-4). He lorded it over them (Gen 37: 5- 11). They sold him into slavery in Egypt (Gen 27: 12- 36). He was a victim of…

By Not Known Abraham and Sarah had Isaac and Isaac & Rebekah had twin sons. We can assume that Esau and Jacob were both circumcised when they were 8 days old (Gen 17: 9- 14) Male circumcision was a spiritual symbol for God’s Old Testament people. It symbolised that they were set apart from the world an dedicated to God. In the same way, some of our parents will…