June 20 and 21
As one with us, He must bear the burden of our guilt and woe. The Sinless One must feel the shame of sin. The peace lover must dwell with strife, the truth must abide with falsehood, purity with vileness. Every sin, every discord, every defiling lust that transgression had brought, was torture to His spirit.
Desire of Ages, page 112 from the chapter, 'The baptism'
I have a friend who has a real problem when he hears people swearing. I have seen him turn pale at the almost innocuous swear words you can hear in normal public speech.
Imagine what life was like for Jesus. He did not live in a rich neighbourhood full of well-bred people. Jesus lived in Nazareth. Nazareth was an inner-city environment before inner-cities were defined.
How does Jesus respond? We can hear the testimony from his enemies. Why does Jesus eat with tax-collectors and sinners? Jesus, though having a ‘tortured spirit’ still found a way to relate to the people.
Perhaps Jesus loved the sinner but hated the sin. Shouldn’t we do the same?
My computer is misbehaving itself so you have the same song as yesterday, and the day before. It is a rather good song with a rather good message. The song is, ‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’ by Van Morrison. You can take the song as a love song – and see the words as a reminder of what you could do today for your loved ones. You could then remind yourself that it’s a good idea to tell God that you love Him. Please click on the picture to listen.
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Housekeeping details for you
The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.
A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here