Category Archives: Morning Musings

Morning Musings

Waters Flow….

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304The discussion at Bible Study got on to water, and rivers. We were reminded how important water is to the human race, and in fact to all life on this planet. Jesus Christ said that He is the Water of Life, and that all spiritual life comes from Him

There are many forms of water…from ice to steam; from calm to rough, and each has some significance. Ice preserves; steam softens; calm speaks of the good times we have and rough waters take us through the trials and troubles that dog our footsteps as humans.

Rivers water the land, and provide drink for animals and humans alike….how dependent we all are on water! And the Water of Life is just as necessary for mankind, for without it we will never have the eternal life that God supplies through His Son, Jesus Christ. All we have to do to get this, is to ask for it, and then thank God for His provision. As simple as that.

Morning Musings

A Christian or a Disciple?

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Are You a Christian or a Disciple?

Bible Study2    We heard a talk recently about the difference between a Christian and disciple. The word disciple is rarely used these days in general conversation, and we have nearly forgotten what it means. Talking about disciples brings to mind the twelve men who followed Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry, and as we stop to think about them, they did indeed leave everything they had for those three years and follow Him.

The word disciple comes from the word discipline….that is, a disciple is one who is disciplined to follow the wishes of another person. As we look around today, and even at ourselves, we realise how little discipline we practice in our daily lives. But unless we practice this, we will never achieve our goals. A top sportsman disciplines his life in the pursuit of excellence in his chosen sport.

So it is with those who say they follow Christ. Do we just follow Him when it suits us, or do we put His wishes before our own and put Him first? Unless we do this, we cannot say we are His disciples. In fact, He said that if we do not put His wishes before our own, we cannot be His disciple (Luke 14:27).

    Too harsh, you might think. The price is too high. But remember what He did for each of us when He left His beautiful home in heaven and came to live on this earth and put himself into a position when people disliked him enough to kill Him. He did this to atone for mankind’s sin. What is our response to this? Well, we will become a Christian and follow Him when it suits us. But don’t ask us to give up our pleasures and sports on His day. That is too much. Is it? We cannot be His disciple unless we practice this discipline. The challenge is there….it is up to each one of us to respond.

 

Morning Musings

How Do You Handle Temptation?

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It is Written….

BIBLE2How do we handle temptation? Can we write it off as merely being something pertaining to a time past and in a different culture? Satan is a past master at suggesting that God maybe didn’t really mean what He said. Perhaps  these days are different! Perhaps we had misunderstood what God had said! Perhaps it is just our interpretation (or the other person’s)?

Satan can even quote the Scripture to reinforce his points of temptation….”look, here it says ‘It is written’ ”

We must be so careful to have the correct interpretation of Scripture firmly fixed in our minds, and not take any verses out of context. If Satan had gone a little further in quoting the verses, he would have been showing his own demise.

We must not be like Eve was. She listened to Satan’s suggestions that God didn’t want them to know the difference between being good and bad, and then she had a second look at the fruit. It DID look nice, perhaps God WAS being mean in saying they weren’t to touch it ! Instead of saying to Satan, “GOD says we aren’t to touch it”, she took that second look and was lost. She didn’t even put up any further argument. She saw it looked good and she took it. She could have thrown it away at that point, but she didn’t. She ate it and gave one to Adam as well. Do you notice that Satan didn’t bother to tempt Adam? He left Eve to do that, and Adam fell with her.

Of course the things that tempt us look good. But we must learn to shut our minds to  temptation when it comes, stand firm for what we know is right, and say “It is written…God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!”

Morning Musings

Do We Have a Plan?

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Do We Have a Plan?

SUMMER7   Warrick and Lisa had recently bought an older house. The kitchen began to get on Lisa’s nerves and they decided to get it done up. But once the units were pulled out, the mess was unbelievable. There was more dust than they thought, and the insulation in the roof began to fall down inside. Lisa began to wonder if it was worth the mess, but Warrick could see further ahead than that. In his mind, the job was already complete, and the kitchen finished.

As we look at the world around us, we wonder where it is all going to end. Things seem to be spiralling out of control. What was going to happen with all the refugees pouring out of their own countries into other ones. Where are they going to get work? How are they going to live? All these questions come pouring into our minds as we contemplate these things. We see more earthquakes causing havoc in third world countries, and droughts causing famines leaving thousands short of food.

We have to understand that these things have to come; they are just the beginning of sorrows…there are more labour pains to come that will get more frequent and intense as time goes by. God has a plan and can see the end from the beginning. It will all end when the time of the birth comes….Christ Jesus could say that He would be satisfied when He saw the result of His sufferings (Isaiah 53:11a). He is still suffering today when His people are being persecuted for His Name’s sake, but when the right time comes He will take His people out of this world to be with Himself for ever.

Meantime, He told His disciples how to have a plan to live through these trying times…

  1. Be watchful and discerning, being continually on guard.
  2. Be calm, and unalarmed….there is no need to be fearful.
  3. Be responsive….we must turn to God at all times and be prepared to be led by Him.
  4. Be firm in our convictions…there is no room for compromise
  5. Be always ready….to give reasons for our belief, and to keep living how we should.

 

 

Morning Musings

How Do I Think?

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     My emotions are not necessarily caused by what happens to me. My feelings are produced by my thoughts about what has been happening to me! What I believe and what I tell myself is what causes my feelings. Our feelings are produced by our thoughts, not by the actual happening. The Bible has this to say about these things….

Proverbs 4:23…..Attend to My sayings….let them not depart from your eyes; keep them in your mind….keep your heart with all diligence.

2 Corinthians. 4:16-18….though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day…

So the things I experience shouldn’t affect my thoughts.

     We must see things from God’s point of view, and bring our thoughts into captivity into line with what God thinks. Philippians 4:8 tells us to think of the things that are good, lovely and of good report, and not feed ourselves on the world’s rubbish.

     So we see that it’s not what is happening that is the problem, it is what I am thinking about it that brings out the latent feelings trapped deep within the human heart. We must practice training our minds to allow the Lord to free us of all negative feelings.

Morning Musings

How Careful Are You?

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Maile 2 - CopySummer is drawing to a close in the Southern Hemisphere. In New Zealand this is the season of sun, sand and fun on the water. But our weather in these islands of New Zealand tends to be very changeable and variable. Especially in the northern part of the country. The land is long and narrow and sandwiched between two large oceans….the Pacific Ocean on the east, and the Tasman Sea on the west which is said to be one of the roughest and most treacherous seas in the world.

Most people living in Northland have some association with the sea, if not commercially, then recreationally. When the weather is good everyone who has a boat takes to the water, and on good days, little boats dot the wide open bays as far as one can see.

My great-grandfather’s family came from an area in England that was inland and as far as we know, had never had any association with the sea. When they emigrated to New Zealand in 1861, they had a four month ocean voyage ahead of them, and then a short coastal trip from Auckland to the Bay of Islands. From then on, their lives were inextricably tied up in the sea. All travel was done by sea; all their goods were transported by coastal scows; one son became a sea captain of sailing ships, another son turned to boat building. The sea was their very life blood, and their descendents have this love of the sea in their veins.

But like a lot of things, while the sea can be a good servant if used wisely, it can be a bad master when carelessly taken for granted. Treat it carefully and it will repay you a hundred-fold, but ignore the signs and one may even pay for it with one’s life!

This summer season many people have lost their lives due to carelessness and taking the sea for granted. Going out in boats that are too small for the conditions, or diving into river pools without being too sure how deep they are. Even when proper precautions are taken, the unexpected can happen.

An acquaintance of ours was recently body boarding with his young son when a wave caught them and the father came off the board hitting his head with some force on the sand. His neck was broken but fortunately for him, his spinal cord wasn’t snapped. He has been told that he is very fortunate to be alive, but that it will be many months before he can lead a normal life again. How prepared are we for a sudden calamity like this? How would we feel in the face of such a change of life style as this calamity has caused?

We have to remember that God has even these things under control, and can bring some good out of ALL things that happen to those who love Him. We cannot blame Him for things that are the results of our own actions, but we CAN look to Him for help and strength in the consequences of things that we do.

 

 

Morning Musings

How Sweet is Honey?

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Bee 1Honey is a wonderful healer in more ways than one. The venom of the bee can be mixed into honey and when a certain amount is taken each day, it can relieve the pain of arthritis. Honey is a natural sweetener, and yet with the sting added, it is a healer as well.

This reminds me of the experiences of life. Sometimes we have wonderful times with friends, family or on holiday and then shortly afterwards, there will be the sting of some disappointment. But if we allow it to, the sting can be a great teaching lesson that we can learn from, and then the healing will come later. Without it, all sweetness has no lasting effect, and will leave us with very little depth to our character. Without the bitter sweet experiences of life, our character will never be developed into what it is capable of being.

Without these times, we aren’t able to comfort others who might encounter similar things in their lives. Just as the honey with venom takes a while to work, so time will heal the sad times we may be going through right now.

Morning Musings

Curiosity Killed the Cat!

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4. Curiosity killed the cat, the old saying goes.  I grew up in a small country community where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and what they couldn’t find out, they made it up instead! So I always like to find out the whys and wheres when something unusual is seen.

This time, we had made our usual summer trek north to our holiday area, and what should we see as we came around the bend in the road near the big local river, but a house sitting on the edge of the river bank among the mangrove trees. Not only one house, but behind it was a second house! There was no real road  in to these houses, and they looked as though they had been dumped there from the river itself.

1.    Visiting friends a couple of days later, I saw a newspaper clipping about these two houses which solved the problem of how they had got there. They had been shipped on a barge from the big city over  two hundred miles south, and a description of the voyage north was given beside the picture. Their final destination was a few miles further up the river where they were going to be transported by truck the final few miles. So that solved the puzzle of the houses sitting in the mangroves on the edge of the river!

It seems strange to me, that something like this makes the news, when really it is no-one else’s business but the people who bought them, while the more important things of life that concern every single person are completely ignored. It’s obvious that these houses will be eventually lived in somewhere, but no-one is really concerned with where their soul is going to live for eternity. We make all sorts of preparations for a big trip we may be going to take overseas, but pay very little attention to the most lasting trip of all which every person is going to take eventually. Surely this is the most important thing to be curious about, and the most important trip to prepare for!