- Alan Herman
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Showing posts with label reflection text. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflection text. Show all posts
Monday 28 June 2010
Altar everything in life
Let's play with spelling. Becoming a Christian both alters and ‘altars’ everything in our life. We alter our life and put everything on the altar to God. The Christian life is one of continual ‘altaration’. I want to ‘altar’ my job (or hobby, or home, or whatever). There is nothing that, with God’s help, we can’t ‘altar’. Try a few sentences of your own.
- Alan Herman
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- Alan Herman
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Remaining silent when God's truth is attacked
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I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.
Dutch translation / Nederlandse vertaling: Stil blijven wanneer Gods waarhied onder vuur wordt genomen
Friday 18 June 2010
Caring for to become Christ-like
'To become Christ-like is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for,
the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain.'
Henry Drummond author of 'The Greatest Thing in the World'
Monday 14 June 2010
Angry but not sinning
“but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” (Jas 1:14 NIV)
“For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does— comes not from the Father but from the world.” (1Jo 2:16 NIV)
“Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (Jas 1:15 NIV)
“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1Pe 5:8 NIV)
“For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,” (Mr 7:21 NIV)
“The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Ge 6:6 NIV)
“who plots evil with deceit in his heart—he always stirs up dissension.” (Pr 6:14 NIV)
“O Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved. How long will you harbour wicked thoughts?” (Jer 4:14 NIV)
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9 NIV)
“How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?” (Jer 23:26 NIV)
“[For the director of music. A psalm of David.] Hear me, O God, as I voice my complaint; protect my life from the threat of the enemy. Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from that noisy crowd of evildoers. They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their words like deadly arrows. They shoot from ambush at the innocent man; they shoot at him suddenly, without fear. They encourage each other in evil plans, they talk about hiding their snares; they say, "Who will see them?" {Or us} They plot injustice and say, "We have devised a perfect plan!" Surely the mind and heart of man are cunning.” (Ps 64:1-6 NIV)
On the Biblestudentsblog I wrote an article in Dutch about our anger and when it is sin or when it is no sin to be angry. > Boos zijn en toch niet zondigen.
Also of interest is the thought of our brother John Aldersley: Being angry and not sinning.
Voor een Nederlandstalig artikel over het al of niet zondig zijn van het boos zijn, vind Boos zijn en toch niet zondigen
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Find also
Be ye angery and sin not
A learning process for each of us
Doest thou well to be angry
He who smiles rather than rages
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2016 linkupdate
A concrete picture of what is to come in the future
The Bible gives us a concrete picture of what is to come in the future: the Kingdom of God. The coming Kingdom is to be a political reality, based upon the earth on which we live. It can therefore be revealed to us in terms which we can understand. The hope set before us is not that of going off to some unknown place when we die, but of living again in a material body (though different in nature) on the earth on which we now live. We look, not for something totally new and different, but for the present state of things on earth to be changed and improved. The changes will be very great and the improvements vast, but it will still be the earth on which we now live. We can relate what the Bible says about this future age to what we know the world today is like. Freedom from disease, no war, agricultural plenty - these will be part of the age to come, and we can contrast such things with today's world and look forward to this new age.
Continue reading > Nature of the afterlife
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2016 linkupdate
Be humble like Christ
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1Pe 5:6 NIV)
There is a crown of pride (#Isa 28:3), which no one should wear. But lots of people love to be recognized and to be placed on a higher platform.
God's hand sym discipline (Exodus 3:19; 6:1; Job 30:21; Psalm 32:4) and deliverance (Deuteronomy 9:26; Ezekiel 20:34). We do not have to compare ourselves with other people in the world. We are better to choose to be humbled under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt us in due time.
We do not like to be humbled. Though we should recognize that it can be wholesome.
Christ was humble -- 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.' He towered infinitely above everyone on earth. How then could he be sincerely humble? Because he realized that he was nothing, and God was everything. He did not (like so many) compare himself with those around him, but with God. He knew that all he ever did or was or understood was of God: the gift of God, the love of God. He had no illusions of his own innate strength or goodness or wisdom. He emptied himself -- his own natural, fleshly self -- and filled himself totally with God: or, rather, he submitted to God totally filling him, to perfectly direct every thought, word and deed. He was the perfect vessel for the Divine use. Let us try to follow him.
Thursday 10 June 2010
The way God sees us
God sees you not as you are
but as it is the intention that you become.
“Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the hand of Jehovah,
and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.” (Isa 62:3 ASV)
Dutch version / Nederlandse versie > Zoals God ons ziet
Separation from God in death, the antithesis of life
"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
We know the passages that describe death in the Old Testament. It is sleep (Dan 12:2). It is total unconsciousness (Eccl 9:5). Death is the antithesis of life.But there is something else of the greatest importance that was central to the thinking of faithful men like David and Hezekiah:
"My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O LORD — how long? Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?" (Psa 6:3-5).
"Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Psa 88:10-12).
"O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness" (Isa 38:16-19).Death completely separates man from fellowship with God. For the faithful man or woman, this is the worst possible thing that could happen. Nothing is of greater consequence. Fellowship with God is the essence of life itself.
Life derives all its meaning from our relationship with God.
The faithful man or woman, for whom fellowship with God is life’s greatest joy, shrinks from anything that severs this holy relationship. Death is an enemy indeed.
No one knew this better than the Lord Jesus Christ. His life was fellowship with the Father in a degree that we can only try to contemplate. He walked with his Father every moment of every day. And His Father walked with him. It was an earnest of the eternal joy that God set before him.
Jesus knew, of course, that he must die to put away the sin of the world. He knew that the grave would not hold him; that he must rise to life again. But this did not diminish the full awfulness of death that loomed before his face.
His words as he entered Gethsemane were an echo of Psalm 6:
"Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ " (Matt 26:38,39).May I suggest that the cup that Jesus prayed might pass from him was not just the cup of physical suffering? It was the bitter cup of death that would separate him from his Father and his God.
Where now would be his remembrance of God? Where now would be his life of praise? Could not God transfigure him, as He had once done on the holy mount, and give him immortality without the horror of even a moment’s separation between them?
Do not holy men and women think this way?
Then the ninth hour of the next day drew near: the hour of his death on the cross, the end. Jesus must have felt the last vestiges of life slipping from him:
"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ " (Matt 27:46).Why have you abandoned me to this end? You are everything to me, even life itself!
Is it not possible that this cry of Jesus simply expressed the anguish of his soul as the darkness that had settled over the land turned into the reality of his death? Heaven must have cried, too. God derives no pleasure from the death of a sinner, let alone the death of the righteous man.
In Psalm 22, the opening words of which anticipated the anguish of Jesus’ soul, the immediate context is separation from God:
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest" (vv 1,2).In David’s case, the experience was some living death when he had sought but received no help from God; when he had prayed but gotten no answer. For Jesus, it was about to become the complete separation of death itself.
How thankful we can be that reassurance follows. God has saved the faithful before. He will do it again. He will yet be enthroned on the living praises of His people:
"Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame" (Psa 22:3-5).God is now forever enthroned in the praises of the Son whom He delivered from the darkness of death. But for a little while their fellowship was severed. The separation of the Father and the Son by his death was a tragedy of the ages. It was not because of anything he had done. Our sins made it happen. Hear his cry from the cross and be ashamed. God forgive us!
Jim Harper (Meriden, CT)
The Christadelphian
TIDINGS
TIDINGS
OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
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