November 10
"At the time of the birth of Christ the nation was chafing under the rule of her foreign masters, and racked with internal strife. The Jews had been permitted to maintain the form of a separate government; but nothing could disguise the fact that they were under the Roman yoke, or reconcile them to the restriction of their power. The Romans claimed the right of appointing and removing the high priest, and the office was often secured by fraud, bribery, and even murder. Thus the priesthood became more and more corrupt. Yet the priests still possessed great power, and they employed it for selfish and mercenary ends. The people were subjected to their merciless demands, and were also heavily taxed by the Romans. This state of affairs caused widespread discontent. Popular outbreaks were frequent. Greed and violence, distrust and spiritual apathy, were eating out the very heart of the nation."
Desire of Ages, page 30 from the chapter, 'The chosen people'
What do you focus on, the short-term advantage or the long-term goal? We have seen that the Jews in the time of Jesus were looking forward to a Messiah who would be King. They wanted a man who would throw out the Romans. It would appear that they weren’t too concerned with the methods he would use. They looked for a short-term advantage.
Jesus came to a stable, grew up in a village and preached out in the wilds of Galilee. He didn’t take a political stance, though he was unafraid of opposing politicians. Rather Jesus came with a long-term view.
My friend, Paul Liburd, has just written a very small book – The Rich, the Poor and the Foolish. The aim of the book is to help readers move from a short-term view of money to a longer-term approach to financial planning.
In our spiritual planning we need to take the same approach. We are heading for the Christmas season. You may not like the event, you may disapprove of the event – but it is there. Could you meet with your prayer partner and develop a plan for what you want to do for Christmas?
You have three aims. One is to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day, a second aim is to develop your relationship with Christ by reading His Word and by reading Ellen White writings. The third aim is to awaken the spiritual consciousness of people you are praying for.
Plan today what you will do to create the situation where the people you are praying for can have some spiritual involvement – by December 25th. You might get some ideas by looking here
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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
From October 21st this site will continue going through 'Desire of Ages' - but begin to advance rather faster than one paragraph at a time.
Our sister site, at the Upper Room, will progress at a rather slower pace - one paragraph at a time. If you want to head to our sister site for the slower trip through an excellent book you will eventually follow a link to the Upper Room. This will start on October 21st.
