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MINDFULNESS – THE ETERNAL NOW I would like to talk about the practice of mindfulness today which is something practised by people of many belief systems. However I am starting with a Scripture that speaks about God’s mindfulness towards us, because that is where mindfulness originally came from .  Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? (This speaks to all of us (mankind) and also Jesus (Son of Man) The root word for mindful in that Scripture is mnaomai (the idea of fixture in the mind - a mental grasp).  So how is Mindfulness to be applied in practice? Mindfulness can be described as the practice of paying attention, with an intention, and in the present moment.  People in our Western culture have been engaging in the practice of mindfulness for some years now. It is a discipline that helps people to stop anxious or distracting thoughts from coming into the mind, helping them to appreciate and pay attention to what is central to them in their here and n

WHAT CAN SEPARATE US God’s love created us and God’s love has joined us to Himself (John 3:16). But what is our experience of God’s love? Our experience will be one of being joined to God and his love or one of being separated from his love and even from God himself. We are going to look at why so many people feel separated from the love of God, and what the Bible says about the experience of being joined to God and his love. Romans 8:35 What can ever separate us from the love of Christ? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow— No power in the sky above or in the earth below can separate us from God’s love—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our

THE NARROW GATE We are offered a choice in life to go down one of two pathways, the pathway to life or the pathway to destruction or ruin. There are many metaphors of this choice in the Bible, starting in Deuteronomy when God offers Israel a pathway to life or a pathway to death, one of blessing and one of cursing. Paul talks in the epistles about walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh, and also about the spiritual mind and the natural mind. In the following Scripture Jesus speaks about the narrow gate and the wide gate. The narrow gate leads to a fulfilled life and the wide gate leads to a destroyed or wasted life. We have one lifetime on this earth and it does not have to be wasted. This choice lies before us all the time. Matthew 7:13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate to destruction (ruin, waste) is wide and the way is easy that leads to it, and many enter in by it. But the gate that leads to life is narrow and the way is hard, and those who find it are few.  When we enter through the narrow ga

FINDING MEANING A life without meaning is a life without hope because it means not moving forward to higher things but just going around in futile or unnecessary things. It is important to know that we are being led forward by God on a journey into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. When Israel was taken out of Egypt and led by Moses through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land they found themselves on a journey of discovering the meaning of their life and purpose, and there are lessons for in us these days that we can learn from how they reacted to the challenges of enormous change and disruption so that we can be led by God into our destiny. 1Corinthians 10:1 I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about Israel in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. They drank from the spiritual rock that travelled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased

PRISONERS OF HOPE  I want to speak today about the hope that can be found during times of uncertainty when many have lost hope and are grieving that loss. I am framing this within the time frame of Israel trying to find their way forward and still floundering after being in captivity in Babylon for seventy years. The prophets at that time knew that God was preparing them for a new hope and were encouraging and challenging them to prepare for that time.  Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.   Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi all wrote to Israel before there was a four hundred years of silence during which time there was no king and no prophetic voice until the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations about the hopelessness felt by Israel in bondage in Babylon during their time

PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD Twelve years after the rebuilding of the walls and gates of the city at Jerusalem had been accomplished the prophet Malachi wrote the last prophetic book of the Old Testament. God’s people now had all they needed to present themselves to the world as a people of God who would be a testimony to the fact that an all loving, all powerful, just and good God was alive in the Heavens. They had rebuilt the altar of sacrifice, laid the cornerstone and true foundation and rebuilt the temple, then re-established the Word of God through Ezra and the priests, then rebuilt the walls and gates of the city, and everything looked so good. There had been such a lot of ‘rise up and build’ on the outside - but unfortunately there had been very little ‘rise up and build’ on the inside that God wanted from them. Prophets like Haggai and Zechariah’s had been speaking a message of the coming of the Messiah and the completion of the temple (516 b.c). And now a mere twelve years after the completion of all

WALLS AND GATES OF SAFETY The story continues of God’s people returning from the seventy years captivity in Babylon and the rebuilding the temple and now, the walls and the city gates of Jerusalem. This entire story is like a second Exodus of Israel coming out of captivity and entering into the Land, with this re-entering taking many long years like the first Exodus. This re-entry spanned the reigns of three kings in Babylon and Persia, with many delays and disruptions because of the enemies in the region. Zerubbabel led the first wave of returning exiles out of Babylon and some years later there came the arrival of Ezra for the rebuilding of God’s Word into the peoples’ hearts. The Temple had now been built, the sacrifices were now being offered, the Word of God had now been restored, but there were still no walls and gates of safety and security for God’s people and they were still open to enemy attack.  So now God sends Nehemiah to return from Babylon to oversee the rebuilding the walls and gates of the ci

THE TEMPLE AND THE WORD  This is the continuing story of God’s people under Zerubbabel returning home to rebuild the temple that was broken down. This story also includes the later arrival of Ezra upon the scene, returning with up to two thousand more exiles, to be part of the rebuilding, but not of the temple his time, but of the rebuilding of God’s Word into the peoples’ hearts. There are parallels in this story of Israel experiencing a reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church today experiencing a reset as a witness for God in the Earth. Their world had come to a standstill just as the world we live in today is in crisis and has also come to a standstill. However there is no standing still in God’s purpose to rebuild and restore his people and to take them forward into his purposes.   God moved the hearts of secular world rulers (Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes moved history for Zerubbabel and Ezra and later Nehemiah) to allow, even encourage and help, the Jewish people to return home

RESET REBUILD We shared last week about Israel returning home to Jerusalem after seventy years of being in bondage in Babylon, and now the 50,000 exiles are under the leadership of Zerubbabel who was in charge of the rebuilding of the temple which was destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar had demolished the city of Jerusalem . The first thing that they did was the rebuilding of the altar of sacrifice which launched them into a new future. I likened this reset for God’s people at that time to the reset we can prepare ourselves for at this moment in history Everything had come to a standstill for them –There are parallels in this story in Israel’s experiencing of a reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church’s experiencing of a coming reset of taking its place as a witness for God in the Earth today. The next thing for Zerubbabel to do was to survey and lay down the foundation of the temple. There was not only no foundation and no temple there was no real city, and there were no walls – and that m

SACRIFICE After seventy years in Babylon God’s people Israel had been in bondage in a strange land. Everything had come to a standstill for them – an enforced seventy year Sabbath to give the land its rest. The Persian King Cyrus sends the exiles, fifty thousand of them, back to Jerusalem in 538 b.c. There are parallels in this story, in Israel’s experiencing of a return and reset of their place as God’s people in the Earth, and the Church’s experiencing of a coming return and reset of taking its place as a witness for God in the Earth today. A man by the name of Zerubbabel was chosen then to lead the exiles back, and he was announced on their return to the Holy Land as the governor of Judah and sometimes referred to as ‘Prince of Judah’, as he was from the lineage of David. Ezra 1:1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation… The Lord, the God of heave

HOW THE REST WAS WON Exodus 17:7 the people of Israel had argued against God and provoked God by saying, "Is Jehovah going to take care of us or not?". And now the warriors of Amalek came to fight against the people of Israel at Rephidim, so Moses instructed Joshua to issue a call to arms to the Israelites, to fight the army of Amalek. ‘Tomorrow, ‘Moses told him, "I will stand at the top of the hill, with the staff of God in my hand!" So Joshua and his men went out to fight the army of Amalek. Meanwhile Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. And as long as Moses held up the staff in his hands, Israel was winning; but whenever he rested his arms at his sides, the soldiers of Amalek were winning. Moses' arms finally became too tired to hold up the staff any longer; so Aaron and Hur rolled a stone for him to sit on, and they stood on each side, holding up his hands until sunset. As a result, Joshua and his troops crushed the army of Amalek, putting them to the sword. Then the Lord instructed Moses, ’

THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL INSIGHT INTO THE TRUE MEANING OF BLESSING

REVOLUTION This century has been marked by global sociological confusion, political corruption, individual loneliness and profound spiritual pain and a sickness of soul. The world is in a global crisis of a sickness of body because of a viral pandemic. There have been other global crises over the last century such as WW1 and the Spanish flu, WW2 and atomic warfare, and now this, which is baffling the entire world regarding preventing it, treating it and how long it has to go. The world has come to a standstill. Despite our unlimited access to knowledge and technology there is a general discontent with the false or unrealized promises that have been offered to society, leaving many feeling empty and unfulfilled. There is also a general distrust of the structures of leadership and systems of government and law and order. There is a feeling in the air is that there is a revolution coming – but what kind of a revolution. A revolution is the overturning of one kind of order to establish or re-establish another ki

A KAIROS PROPHETIC TIME Acts 17:26 ‘And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times (kairos) and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; For in him we live and move and have our being, for we are his offspring…For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” There are two words used for time in the Scriptures. One is chronos and the other is kairos. Chronos refers to the measured space of time that exists as a background clock time for everything that ever happens to us. Kairos means the times of ultimate destiny for mankind and the world (eschatological time). Kairos is a prophetic passage of time that may last for a short or a long period of clock time. Relative to the big plan of our li

THE HIGH CALL OF GOD Philippians 3:13 … I press toward the goal for the prize of the high call of God in Christ Jesus. The High Call of God is actually translated as the Upward Call of God. The word for high is ano which means upward or above, or Heavenly. The word in the original Greek for ‘Call’ is klesis which means an invitation. That means that a Heavenly invitation is coming from above, from God, and our response to that invitation, our RSVP, is directed upward, back to God. This Heavenly Invitation is not a status or rank that makes some people get a ‘High’ calling and some people get a ‘low’ calling. God does not send out low invitations, he only issues a heavenly invitation, to get to know him, personally and intimately, through Jesus. Paul’s writes about his response to a personal invitation from God towards himself, to know him personally and intimately. (1Corinthians 1:31 – the glory trophy of knowing God – Jer 9.4) Philippians 3:8-10 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of

POWER LOVE AND AN ORDERED MIND 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear (deilia - timidity), but the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind. That word deilia that means timidity occurs only once in the whole bible – it is not phobeo the word used for fear in very other Scripture in the New Testament. Paul writes an emotional letter to his dear friend and ‘son in The Lord’ Timothy. He says to him ‘I remember you in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears. Timothy had been going through quite a bit of suffering in the Church at Ephesus and was feeling rejected and intimidated and a little bullied perhaps because of the rejection of the Gospel message that he had embraced through Paul and delivered to the Ephesian church. Paul commiserates with him and tells him of his own suffering as he was suffering in jail for the same reason – the rejection of his message of the Gospel of grace. So he encourages Timothy that they can share together in th

THE WRESTLE The story of Jacob starts in Genesis chapter 25 (8 chapters) with Jacob grabbing his twin brother Esau’s heel at birth. He couldn’t wait, he wanted to be out there first, right from the beginning (The heel grabbing didn’t work by the way because Esau came out first), but that became the story of his life – Heel grabbing is all about impatience! Outa my way… Jacob and Esau were the sons of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham, the father of the Hebrew Nation. Abraham was told by God that his descendants would inherit the Land of Canaan, the Promised land. So as the firstborn son of Isaac, Esau was in line for he and his descendants to inherit all the Promises given to Abraham. The inheritance was to be imparted at the end of Isaac’s life and now it was time to pass it on. The Bible says that Esau was a hairy man, a hunter, and he smelled of the hunting fields. But Jacob cheated his Father and older brother by dressing up to smell like his older brother, and when Esau was out hunting Jacob asked his bl

HIDDEN TREASURE This is the story about us being vessels that contain a treasure within. And no matter how fragile that vessel is, or how formidable are the pressures upon that vessel, the inner treasure is of greater power than the outward pressure. There is a Scripture that talks about that Treasure, which is the life of Jesus within us, being made evident in our lives, no matter what is going on in our circumstances. 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard- pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you. Many people are as

COMMUNION JESUS AND PASSOVER FEAST The first Communion service ever was when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Like many other Jewish groups and families in Jerusalem they were sharing the Passover meal that night, as that was the custom on that special day before the Feast of Passover for every family to eat of the Passover lamb. Israel shared this meal each year to celebrate the miraculous deliverance of Israel out from Egypt where they had been in slavery under cruel oppression for 400 years. On that Passover day that they fled out of Egypt each home was instructed to take a lamb for each household and to kill the lamb and apply the blood of that firstborn lamb on the doorposts and lintels of the house so that the angel of death would ‘pass over’ them, and the firstborn son of each family was spared from death, and the firstborn son of every Egyptian family died. To this day Orthodox Jews as individual households all over the world celebrate this Passover feast. They come together for a tra

STAND STILL AND SEE THE SALVATION OF YOUR GOD. These words were spoken by Moses at the Red Sea as Israel marched forward to a new beginning. It was a new beginning of seeing God supernaturally at work in their lives. Every life can have this new beginning of seeing God at work in their lives. It is the life of faith. Exodus 14:13 And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of your God, which He will accomplish for you today. This the story of Israel crossing the red sea after escaping out of Egypt, and with the Egyptian army chariots in pursuit. The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years, two million of them, with no concept of God. They had been without prophets, except for their new leader Moses, and there was yet no priesthood or Commandments or tabernacle. They were glad to be out of there but then they were horribly disappointed and disillusioned by the fact that there was an impassable Red Sea in front of them and they believed that they had been