OzThoughts –Wednesday 29th July, 2009.

OzThoughts –Wednesday 29th July, 2009.

[Admin Notice: There will be no OzThoughts on Friday, Saturday or Sunday as I will be away from the computer attending a seminar in Melbourne ].

Love and forgiveness are actions which come from the Spirit living within. There are many stories of people who had seen themselves as unclean, unworthy and useless who have found a new way of living because some one reached out in the name of Christ.

On the other hand we are so much like those who captured, tried and stoned Stephen. We want to be policeman, judge and jury and sometimes help in the “execution” of good people. Stephen was one of the people selected by the early Church to do the welfare work of the church. How ever, Stephen did more than just provide the food parcels. He was arrested because he was involved in the ministry other than just doing welfare. He was showing the power of God by doing miracles.

As Stephen as stoned to death we read that the cloaks of those who stoned him were held by a young man named Saul and that Saul approved of his death. (Acts 7: 58-8.1). The story of acts goes on to tell of the conversion of Saul (who we also know by his Roman name Paul), and we find that Paul later writes in his letter to the Romans of the internal conflict that he finds between the good and evil (Romans 7& 8).

PRAYER:

Heavenly Father, I thank you for forgiveness through Jesus. I pray that I will find the power of your Holy Spirit within me that enables me not only to stop doing wrong but to reach out in love and forgiveness to others. Don’t let me stand by ‘holding the coats’ while evil is done. Help me to have a holy anger that moves against wrong and injustice done to others. Amen.



MEDITATION:

Romans 7 (The Message)

22I truly delight in God's commands, 23but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Romans 8 (The Message)
1With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. 2A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

[Listen: http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/music2/mus_3806.mp3 ]

I bring thee my cares and my sorrows,
I bring thee my doubts and my fears,
I bring thee the sins which have burdened my soul
And shadowed my pathway for years.

Chorus
O save me, dear Lord! O save me, dear Lord!
I plead by thy mercy.
O save me, dear Lord!

2.
O thou who doth know human frailties,
Prepare me for gain or for loss;
Though born of the dust,
Lord, our Father art thou,
The builder of sun and the cross.

3.
Forgive all my blindness and folly,
My prodigal wanderings and shame.
O heed now the outcrying pains of my heart!
I come as the prodigal came.

4.
We thank thee we find in life's wilderness
Established thy gardens of grace,
In temptation's desert a cool shading rock,
In darkness the light of thy face.
Author: Evangeline Booth (1865-1950)
The Salvation Army Song Book: Song Number: 288

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