invincible hero

“Superhero movies...can become box-office gold” a national newspaper said recently. BBC news reported that there are now some 30 superheroes in films and comics. What is it within us that finds so compelling the idea of someone endowed with amazing powers being on hand to overcome evil?

As a kid I was enthralled by superman: bullets bouncing off his chest overcoming every villain.

Now I follow a greater truly invincible hero: Jesus of Nazareth. Weapons did not bounce off of him. Mere nails penetrated his flesh as he was pinned to a cross and died. But 3 days later he rose bodily from the dead and he did it for real in history, not in comic fiction. Isaiah, foreseeing hundreds of years before it happened, the coming of Jesus as our saviour called him “Mighty God” which can be translated “Hero God”.

1 John 5:1-5

Take a listen to my son's sermon on 1John 5:1-5


http://emmanuelchurchlondon.org/gg/portfolio/latest-podcasts/

God makes a way

     

                         

Mario Costeja González has gained immortality by insisting on being forgotten. Whenever he googled his name a 1998 report would appear about his home being auctioned to pay his debts. The European Court of Justice has ruled that Google should remove the link and that there was a “right to be forgotten”. Whether that judgment can be enforced is another matter. But can wrong be forgotten? The Bible says our wrong doing “is engraved with an iron tool” (Jeremiah 17:1). That suggests it cannot be simply forgotten. The good news is that God has made away for our wrong doing to be wiped from the record. Not by Google or anyone else juggling a bit of computer code or by any court but God himself wipes out the charges against us by taking them away and nailing them to the cross (Col 2:14) when we admit our faults to him and ask for forgiveness. Great news!

Blessings,

Ron.

Believing God

Someone recommended the author Beth Moore to me, if you have a kindle or the app on your ipad go to Amazon and download some of her free kindle books. 

I am reading the book in the photo above. It is an easy to read book full of God's Word and His promises. 

As we begin this new year 2014, chapter three 

'Preparing for Wars and Wonders' is particularly interesting....

'Just like the children of Israel, we will always have an enemy that wants to keep us out of our promised lands. In our previous chapter we discussed a few reasons why. Nothing does more damage to the power of darkness in this world system than a present-active-participle believer. If we are going to win our battles, however, were going to have to wise up to some of Satan's schemes and prepare in advance for victory. Our warfare is complicated by opposition that is much harder to identify than human Hittites, Perrizites and Amorites. In Ephesians 6:12-13, the apostle Paul tells us that our "struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities. against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full amour of God"

Among the strategically prescribed pieces of amour, the King James version tells us, "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" Why 'above all' do we need to learn to use our shield of faith? Because the shield of faith is the amour's amour. The ancient warrior hoped the fiery dart never reached the helmet or the breastplate. A direct hit on any of the other defensive covers could still stun and bruise even if it didn't wound. The warriors goal was to extinguish any oncoming dart with his shield in order to diffuse all potential damage. When the warriors shield was down, the other pieces of amour were vastly more vulnerable. The same is true in our warfare. Our toughest battles will invariably concern matters of faith - times when we're tempted to think God's Word and His ways wont work for us, that He has abandoned us, let us down, or failed to come through for us. If Satan can get us to drop our shield of faith, he knows we cant remain standing for very long'

So I encourage you as we go into 2014 to use whatever means you can to build your faith in a God who is who He says He is. 

A God who can do what He says He can do.

Knowing that I am who He says I am

I can do all things through Christ

And Gods Word is alive and active in me.

I pray that God will bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you and give you His peace

May 2014 be a year of many blessings

Lindsey Toms

Inheritance

Who would throw £4millions away? James Howell did-inadvertently. He recently threw away his computer which disappeared irretrievably into a land fill before he realised the hard disc contained his 7,500 bitcoins. Bitcoins are a computer generated digital currency that has soared in value from $15 last January to over $1,000 this week. 

Bitcoins have long been favoured by libertarians, gold bugs and drug dealers. They escape government controls and can be used, almost anonymously, anywhere they are accepted.

 While feeling sorry for James, I “praise... God [who]...in his great mercy... has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead... into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you”. 

Have you made that inheritance yours yet? I have-the best thing I ever did!

Ron White

Can Google Solve Death?

“Can Google solve death?” ran a headline in the current issue of Time. It added that “the search giant is launching a venture to extend the human life span. That would be crazy-if it weren't Google”. With a world view that believes “everything is solvable if you reduce it to data and then throw enough processing power at it. The project “might one day defeat death itself”. Don`t you think that we should tell the geeks of Silicon Valley that the problem has already been solved. Two thousand years ago the man, Jesus, was publicly executed; certified dead (they speared him through his ribs just to make sure); buried and on the third day after being killed he rose bodily from the dead to be seen alive in public by many people over several weeks. Death has indeed been solved: it has been “swallowed up in victory”. 

Ron White

Forgiveness

Forgiving him “frees us. It keeps us from going to prison with Conor” said Andy and Kate Grosmaire about Conor McBride who admitted murdering their daughter Ann. 

Could I have forgiven like that? I don`t know. 

But I do know that I need forgiveness and that Jesus told a parable about a man who had been forgiven a huge debt, refused to forgive his debtor a trifling sum. The man who did not forgive was told `“I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”  In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he paid back all he owed` (Matt 18:32-34).   

Jesus died on the cross to pay my penalty for me so that I might be forgiven. In view of what Jesus has done for me, surely the only proper response is for me to forgive others?

 If I find that difficult, I can count on His grace to help me.

Ron