are we hiding in the wine press?

God wants us to experience encounters with Him, through these encounters God comforts, challenges, heals and forgives us. 

He changes us. 

We cannot manipulate these encounters but we can make ourselves available, to be attentive to His voice and to follow His guidance.

We need to set aside time to meet with Him daily, to commune with Him and seek His plan for our lives.

We read about many encounters with God throughout the Bible, many men and women who have had their lives changed through these confrontations with their heavenly Father.

The Israelites were being oppressed by the Midianites, they cried out to God and He demonstrated His mercy by raising up a man named Gideon. 

The Israelites had disobeyed God and this was the reason they had fallen into a dangerous place. Gideon was hiding in a wine press threshing his wheat when he encountered God. This encounter left him a different person, he had gone from hiding from his enemies to being called a 'Mighty man of valour'. 
He had been transformed.
Are we hiding in the wine press or do we want to experience an encounter with God? 

We need to be attentive to His voice and follow His commands

Lindsey Toms

-The `undo` button on my laptop! Ron White

The `undo` button on my laptop!   

This is my favourite button. It is the most used and necessary of my laptop`s features. Edith Piaf used to belt out a stirring song 

“Non, Je ne regrette rien”(“No, I regret nothing”). 

I don`t know if she lived by it, but the morphine and alcohol addiction of her later years and an early death when only 48 years old suggests all was not what it might have been. When I look back I can think of many occasions when I wish life had an undo button. But it has not. What has been said and done cannot now be unsaid or undone. But God has provided something better, at huge cost to himself, because he loved us he has provided a way that can put us right with him. The Bible says if we admit the wrongs we have done, God is faithful and just and will forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This is real because Christ died on the cross to take the penalty for all the wrong things we have done.  More than that if we trust in Christ then God will make us a new creation! Wow! Not an “undo” but a “make new” feature: that is grace.

Do you worship the Work? by Oswald Chambers

'We are Gods fellow workers...' 1 Corinthians 3:9

Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. This will mean that all the other boundaries of life, whether they are mental, moral or spiritual limits, are completely free with the freedom God gives His child;  a worshipping child not a wayward one. A worker who lacks this serious controlling emphasis of concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work. He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated. There is no freedom and no delight in life at all. His nerves, mind and heart are so overwhelmed that God's blessing cannot rest on him.

But the opposite case is equally true - once our concentration is on God, all the limits of our life are free and under the control and mastery of God alone. There is no longer any responsibility on you for the work. The only responsibility you have is to stay in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with Him.The freedom that comes after sanctification is the freedom of a child, and the things that used to hold your life down are gone. But be careful to remember that you have been freed for only one thing - to be absolutely devoted to your co-Worker.

We have no right to decide where we should be placed, or to have preconceived ideas as to what God is preparing us to do. God engineers everything; and wherever He places us, our one supreme goal should be to pour out our lives in wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.

'Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might....' Ecclesiastes 9:10

The Cross of Christ

Colossians 2:11-15   

 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self-ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ. Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. Having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Because of the work of the cross our legal standing before God is complete at the moment we are born again.It can have nothing added to it, no matter how obedient or committed to Jesus we become after we are converted. This is because it is given to us purely on the basis of God’s undeserved grace and mercy. It is not something we can earn or deserve. It is received by faith. It involves the total cancellation of our previous legal standing of guilt and condemnation before God the Supreme Ruler and Judge John Stott wrote  'The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.' 

God Is Love

God is love and the Christian is to show Love.... But first... you must love Jesus.

You cannot truly love your brother or sister if you do not truly love Jesus.

He died for you and freed you from sin.  He showed his love for you by dying for you.

Do you love Jesus?

How is it manifested in your life?

Do you hide from Him or seek Him?

Do you wait for Him in prayer or only on Sundays?

What does it mean to Love Jesus?

It means to put Him first.

It means to obey Him.

It means to love one another.

It means to love God.

The great question which all rational beings must answer is this: "Do you love Jesus Christ?"   As Christians we must ask it often. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments"

Refiners Fire

Malachi 3:2-3

Who can endure the day of His coming 

And who can stand the day He appears?

For He is like a refiners fire and like a launderers soap

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; 

He will purge the sons of Levi

And purge them as gold and silver

That they may offer to the Lord

An offering in righteousness

The refiner’s fire that Jesus takes us through, He went through Himself. He went through it and suffered and died for our sake so that we would not have to deal with the flames ourselves. Jesus took that fire upon Himself, though He did not have to, and Jesus offers us salvation from our sins because of what he did.

But then Jesus tells us that if we truly want to follow Him, we are going to have to go where He leads. Jesus doesn't promise us complete prosperity and ease of life. What Jesus does promise is a life that is good.

1Peter 1:6-7

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith - greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Promises, Promises Promises!

In Genesis God makes a clear and comprehensive promise to Abram 'I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great, And so you will be a blessing'. When we as humans make promises we enter in to a contract usually with the intention of fulfilling the contract being made, an example when a groom and bride stand facing each other on their wedding day they make  promises to one another with the full intention of keeping them, many fail in the promises made during their wedding vows .

 Not so with God when he makes promises you can be confident  he will fulfill them he is faithful . The problem arises when the promises do not come to fruition within our time scale, as was the case for Abram. 
God promised that he would have descendants that would become a nation that takes time which Abram clearly did not factor into the promise,  having descendants does not happen over night, but he makes a common mistake he helps God out, through his own scheme rather than waiting for God's plan to come about. Patience is not a gift many of us have but it is a fruit of the Spirit which is given by God and developed within us all we need to do is to ask for it, it is not instant, it is a life time lesson for some of us to learn but learn it we must.
 Blessings Ray