The World’s Darkest Hour

Time is short, we hear this a lot, but time really is short. We are on this earth for such a fleeting moment and then it will be over. We therefore have a small window of opportunity to choose our eternal destination before it is too late. The choice is simple, there are only two destinations.

Source: Josh McDowell Ministry

I am currently reading some of the classic sermons of Billy Graham and in one of those Sermons’ reference is made to the last hour of Jesus's life, which is described as the ‘World’s darkest hour’. The sermon goes into graphic detail of the pain and suffering endured by Jesus and provides a vivid reminder of the love of God for us, that He loves us so much He sacrificed His one and only beloved son so that we can be reconciled to Him. What jumped out at me is where it is pointed out that Jesus knew He would endure this pain and suffering for the whole of his life; John 2:4 ‘Jesus replied. ‘My hour has not yet come’ and Luke 9:21 ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life’.

Imagine if you had to live the entirety of your life knowing that your death was going to be painful beyond anything you could ever imagine and that you knew with certainty that your last days on earth were going to be so horrific?  Well, Jesus did, and it is hardly a surprise when Jesus asks His Father if there is another way; Matthew 26:39 ‘he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will’. Notice that Jesus is not asking for this not to happen, but asking if there is another way. In order to purge sin from this world and to reconcile us back to Him in purity, it was necessary to do this in the harshest and most devastating way to enable us to be cleansed once and for all. This is what Jesus did for us, He took all of our sins, all of them, and He paid the price for us. How can we not love Him? How can we not be thankful to Him every single day?  How can we not give everything in our lives to Him? He gave everything for us and took our place on the cross. There are no words that could do justice to the Thanks, Gratitude, Praise and Glory that He deserves, it really is beyond words. 

We know that one day we are going to pass from this earth, but only God knows the precise moment for each of us. Those who have excepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour will not endure the consequences of their sin because Jesus did that for us. We will not be ridiculed, spat at, whipped or nailed to a cross (although we deserve to be). Jesus suffered for us so that God would see us a blameless, as spotless and pure. Jesus knew that even though He was sinless, that He would suffer for the sins of mankind. This is why God brought Himself to earth, through Jesus, because He wanted to bring us back to Him. That's how much He loves us. Wow!

Source: re-Ver(sing) Verses

Jesus crucified on the cross is a reminder of the pain and suffering for all eternity that awaits those who do not know Him. Matthew 13:49-50 ‘This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’. The empty cross is God's gift to those who know Jesus, showing that our sins are forgiven, all suffering is taken away, all pain is gone and a resurrected new life in eternity awaits! Sadly, there are many who choose to ignore and to accept the gift that Jesus gave us, which the Bible refers to as foolishness; 1 Corinthians 1:18 ‘For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’.

Time is short, we hear this a lot, but time really is short. We are on this earth for such a fleeting moment and then it will be over. We therefore have a small window of opportunity to choose our eternal destination before it is too late. The choice is simple, there are only two destinations. Do you want to spend eternity in hell enduring the same pain and suffering that Jesus did before He died and where you will be thrown into the blazing furnace? or do you want to spend eternity in heaven and be with the Lord forever?‘ 1Thessalonians 4:16-17 ‘For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever’. It would seem to be an obvious choice, but the Bible tells us that many will not realise until it is too late. Matthew 7:13-14 'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it'. Everyone has the opportunity to choose their path and to accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, and all will acknowledge and bow before Him, even those who have refused to recognise and acknowledge Him; Philippians 2:10 ‘at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’.

I leave the final words to Billy Graham; ‘But before the triumph, before the crown, before the kingdom, before the victory, there had to come the suffering. Before you can share in Christ's victory, before you can have a new life here and now, before you can go to heaven, before you can claim the promise that we shall someday reign with Christ, you, too, must come to that same cross. You, too, must come in simple faith and stand at the foot of that cross’.

Prayer - Father, I thank you for loving me so much that you gave me Jesus so that I have Him in my life to watch over and guide me, to comfort me and to love me. I thank you that through the sacrifice of Jesus I will spend eternity in Heaven with you. I pray for all of those lost souls who ignore or refuse to accept Jesus, that you will remove the scales from their eyes and they too will come to the foot of the cross, so that they can experience your love and look forward to eternity with you. I pray this in the magnificent name of Jesus. Amen

Author: Gary O’Neill

May God bless and enrich your life   

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others

Reawakening the Holy Spirit

There is absolutely no situation in our lives that God is not aware of. He not only knew the situations were coming but He also knows how they end. He pours out His grace so that we can be overcomers not because of who we are but because of who He is

Source: My Daily Inspiration Bible Verses

As I look back on last year I think how great and awesome our Heavenly Father is. I come with eager expectation of what things He has in store for us as 2018 continues to unfold. I am sure that everyone who is reading this will be thinking of the blessings and the challenges they have faced during the past twelve months. Maybe some have had a year of the Lord’s favour upon them and are running into 2018 full of anticipation. Others maybe have felt that as one calamity came to an end another one began and are approaching this Year with a sense of trepidation!! I pray that whichever category you fall in, your delight would still be in the Lord; 1 John 5:14-15 ‘This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him’.

At a gathering on New Year’s Eve somebody at the table asked me what my particular highlight of 2017 was. I asked the person to come back to me while I pondered on the question whilst the other people around the table were asked the same question. Listening to the responses around the table I realised that even as a body of Christians our delights and highlights are not triggered by the same incidents or circumstances as each other and our reactions and responses are also very different. I was impacted by the thought that this is why each one of us are intricately and wonderfully made, to better reflect the myriad of gifts and talents and facets the Lord has blessed us with. My answer to the question is a personal one. My blessing came through God hearing my plea for somebody else and God made a way where there seemed to be no way. This however, is somebody else’s testimony to share not mine. But if you are in a situation that you think no-one or nothing can change, hand it over to God and see what He can do.

Source: PInterest

The challenge I set myself for 2018 is that I will be determined to be attentive to His call, be steadfast in my walk and live a life that reflects the beauty of the Holy Spirit within, even when the ugliness of this World crowds in and tries to knock me of course I will simply lift my head and ask for God’s grace and help to walk in the calling and destiny He has for my life; Psalm 23:1-3 ‘The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake’. At our church, we as a body of believers are convinced that change is coming and that God is on the move. We are praying that we will be steadfast when the way ahead seems unfamiliar and in uncharted waters. There is absolutely no situation in our lives that God is not aware of. He not only knew the situations were coming but He also knows how they end. He pours out His grace so that we can be overcomers not because of who we are but because of who He is. 2 Corinthians 12:9 ‘But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’.

If you are reading this today and some of the passion you had has ebbed away and you feel like a failure, ask God to bring back to your memory the times and places that you were filled with the Holy Spirit and ask Him to reawaken you. This doesn’t have to happen in a big meeting it can be quietly in your own home, but don’t pass up the opportunity. Lamentations 3:22-26 ‘Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him. The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD’.

Every blessing.

Author: Lyn Hunt

May God bless and enrich your life

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others

The Love of Jesus and His Healing Power

You cannot short-circuit the process of bereavement, but God was with me every step of the way and my heart was in one piece – I never suffered that appalling pain again

Source: PInterest

My testimony of Jesus meeting me and healing me happened many years ago, I am divorced and have been on my own for 17 years. A while before my husband and I separated, my heart was broken. Doctors know that people can actually die of a broken heart. The pain I felt was so intense that I kept crying out to God for help.

I went to a meeting in Birmingham with a friend which I went to saying to God that I would not go home unless He helped me, and I meant it – I was desperate. After the speaker had given the Word he called on a lady to give her testimony. She said that God had healed her of a physical problem to do with her heart, but she felt that God was saying that He wanted to heal the broken hearted and for people to come and get prayer. I was out of that seat as fast as I could go but it took me a while to get to where the lady was praying for people. A man prayed for me and nothing happened. I knew that the lady who had the word had to pray for me, however, by this time the meeting was coming to an end.

Source: Knowing Jesus

Eventually I managed to get to the women who prayed for me simply.  As she started praying, Jesus was right in front of me and His presence and love were overwhelming. My broken heart was healed instantly. I remember saying to God that even if I had to live the rest of my life with a broken heart, I would follow Him, which was the only response I could give to such love. After the separation and divorce I went through a long period of bereavement; getting divorced is a major loss and I had been married for just about 30 years. You cannot short-circuit the process of bereavement, but God was with me every step of the way and my heart was in one piece – I never suffered that appalling pain again.

Isaiah 61:1 ‘The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners’.

Author: Muriel Allen

May God bless and enrich your life

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others

It’s time to stand up for Christ

We cannot have one foot in the world and the other foot in the Kingdom. We have to make a choice between God’s way or the world’s way, and by deciding not to choose either then we choose the world’s way.

Source: PInterest

In 2 Corinthians 12:9 the Apostle Paul says; ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’. Paul’s response is amazing, because instead of continuing to plead with God to have the thorn in his side taken away, he goes on to say; ‘Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me’. He continues in verse 10 to say; ‘That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong’. Why mention this you might ask? Well I’ve been pondering recently why the Church (the born-again church), appears to lack any real power and doesn’t appear to be moving very far forward at any great pace, even the parts of the church that do appear to be moving still have little influence on the world. So, as I pondered this and started to think of the many conversations I’d had recently with Christians from various denominations, it occurred to me that instead of being on fire for God as His born again church we’re more like wet squibs and a 'moan again' church.

We seem to have forgotten that our walk with God has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Him. The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies’. Christ paid the price of our selfish, filthy sin on the cross, He took our place that we might know forgiveness of sin and freedom from death, yet we act like we’re doing Him the favour by allowing Him to be our Saviour. Shame on us! It’s about time we stopped our own pity parties and stopped moaning about what we don’t have or continually focussing on the problems we do have. We should remind ourselves that without God we would have nothing and would be doomed to spend eternity in hell, the place we deserve to spend eternity, instead of having the hope we have of spending eternity in Heaven and in God’s presence, through Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.

Source: Sermon Quotes

It’s time for us to stop looking inwards and to start acting like the new creations we are in Christ. We need to serve God as Bond servants, which means we have no rights of our own, we should be subservient to, and entirely at the disposal of our Lord and King to do His will and not ours. Let me re-state the scripture above ‘We are not our own; we were bought at a price. Therefore we are to honour God with our bodies’. We’d do well to remember the command Jesus gave His disciples in John 13:34-35 ‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’. We also need to serve one another as fellow servants and be more concerned about the needs of others than we are about our own needs. As we take our eyes off ourselves and fix them firmly on Christ the author and perfector of our faith and serve Him and one another in love, then I believe we will start to make a massive difference, and in our weaknesses, see God’s power made perfect.

Ask yourself these questions; ‘When people look at you do they see a Temple of the Holy Spirit or a Temple of self?’ Then ask yourself; ‘Do you love the Lord? Do you really love the Lord? Do you really, really love the Lord?’ Then consider; ‘Do you trust the Lord? Do you really trust the Lord? Do you really, really trust the Lord?’ If you’re honest with yourself, these questions could change the way you live your Christian life. We would all do well to remember and follow the words of Jesus in John 5:19 ‘Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does’ and in John 8:28 So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on My own but speak just what the Father has taught Me’.

Do we love the world and our own wants and desires more than God? With this in mind, here is one final question. If God asked you to do something you really didn’t want to do, would you do it, even if you didn’t understand why or couldn’t see any sense in it. Would you just do it simply because He asked you to? This is a matter of obedience. 1 John 2:15-17 tells us; ‘Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives for ever’. We cannot have one foot in the world and the other foot in the Kingdom. We have to make a choice between God’s way or the world’s way, and by deciding not to choose either then we choose the world’s way. Remember we cannot use our weaknesses as an excuse for not doing God’s will, after all God said ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’. We need to live by the truth. God’s Word is truth, and His Word clearly tells us that we are in the last days. You only have to look around if you have eyes to see and ears to hears you will know that this is the case. So, choose, and choose wisely.

I leave you with this final scripture from Romans 12:1-2 ‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will’.

Every blessing.

Author: Kevin Hunt

May God bless and enrich your life

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others

God is our refuge and strength in times of trouble

In our lifetime we will experience all kinds of stress and troubles, but by faith we can take comfort, direction, encouragement and strength in the promises of God, to be overcomers

Source: Knowing Jesus

I feel in my heart that God is saying to the church ‘be ready for the great event which is about to take place’. I have listened and have read various prophecies recently and I am convinced that great things are about to happen and in fact are already in progress. Take note however; as we listen and read there will be backlash, but take heart because God has promised to strengthen and encourage us through His Word; 

Isaiah 40:8 ‘the grass withers the flowers fall, but the word of our god endures forever’.

After the victory when Elijah killed 450 prophets of Baal, in 1 Kings 18:19-40 he ran away because Jezebel promised to kill him 1 Kings 19:2-3 ‘So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, ‘May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them. Elijah was afraid and ran for his life’. But the Word of God promised in Isaiah 54:17 ‘no weapon forged against us will prevail’.

Source: PInterest

Zephaniah 3:15 ‘The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm'.

2 Chronicles 32:7-8 ‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him, for there is a greater power with us than with him.  With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles’. Who better to fight for us than the all-powerful Almighty God?.

Psalm 62:1-2 ‘Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

Nahum 1:7 ‘The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him’.

Psalm 5:11 ‘But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you’.

1 Peter 3:12 ‘For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer’. 

We can also look and see so many times how God answers prayers in ways that we could never have imagined;

James 5:13 ‘Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise’.

James 5:17-18 ‘Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops’.

In our lifetime we will experience all kinds of stress and troubles, but by faith we can take comfort, direction, encouragement and strength in the promises of God, to be overcomers.

Finally, here is something for you to think about; Recently we were at a meeting where a couple from Burundi were speaking. The lady challenged me very much when she spoke. She pointed to three chairs; the first chair represented the kingdom of self, the second chair represented the kingdom of the world and the third chair represented the Kingdom of God. She asked us to think for a while and then to decide which chair we would be sitting on. Let me ask you the same question; which chair are you sitting on? Maybe It is time for us to make a choice for our eternal future, to seek first the Kingdom of God and to try to ensure that we are sitting on the right chair!

God blessings and His Peace to all.

Author: Herbert Jean 

May God bless and enrich your life

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and others