Pastoral Message (Page 95)

By Not Known The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer have been on our minds this month as we considered the Biblical base behind the new Ministry Plan for our congregation After the very important title of address, Our Father who is in heaven, the prayer starts with a focus on God. (That is an important lesson for the order and emphasis of our won prayers.) The focus…

By Not Known ‘Kingdom’ Is a big Bible theme from Genesis to Revelation. Put simply, God’s kingdom is God’s rule over God’s people in God’s place. The kingdom pattern was established in Eden. Adam and Eve lived as God directed in the place that God provided. However, this did not last, for they sinfully tried to live in God’s place…

By Not Known The Lord’s Prayer includes the puzzling line: hallowed be your name. What does this mean? Perhaps it means that God’s name should not be said aloud at all, or, always pronounced in pious tones. On this basis, the Jewish community developed ingenious way of talking about God without using his name, lest they be accidentally disrespectful. We should…

By Not Known It’s easy to talk about God. His name slips off our lips as we casually chat about him in Bible study or invoke his help in our prayers. But God is not as familiar to us as the location of our favourite restaurant. As Isaiah reminds us, he is beyond our understanding and counsel (Is 40:13-14). Or as Job points out, none of us has a claim on him that he…

By Not Known What food do people eat? How is it served? How is it eaten? Who eats first? These and thousands of other things reveal the patterns of relationships and behaviour that add up to our culture. Culture can be as broad as a nation or race, or as small as the culture of a nuclear family. How does being Christian affect culture? Some try to create a uniqely and…

By Not Known if a scholar wrote an ‘A’ grade book on the doctrine of God while spending much of his time debating and tearing down other scholars, does he really know Jesus? If a devout leader who has spearheaded many key ministries went around stepping on people by his tactless actions and insensitive words, does he really know Jesus? What about ordinary…

By Not Known Some time ago, a church gave this name to its Youth Ministy, the Joshua Generation. Joshua represents the second generation and encourages every second-generation leader. He was not the one who gathered the nation of Israel. Moses did. Joshua only succeeded Moses upon his death. Joshua finished the work that Moses started. Joshua was left with the challenge…

By Not Known A good friend of mine once shared with me that a true Christian is much like a good institution in that it has to have 2 primary ingredients: character and competence. A study of institutions that endured the test of time may confirm this assertion. At the time when a commercial airliner crashed, killing everyone on board, there were reports that just prior…

By Not Known From our view, a new year is full of unknowns. Think back over 2005. Did you expect the significant events that happend in your life? Many of us find that some significant events happened as we expected, but that there were more surprises than certainties. And even as our year closes we can be surprised by pain as life takes another unwanted twist. These…

By Not Known The Bible talks about the birth of Jesus as an historical event. Events in history have several aspects: there is the event itself, or the raw facts of ‘what happened?‘ there is our interpretation of the event, or ‘what does it mean?‘ there is our response to the event and it interpretation, or ‘what must I do?‘ Concerning…