September 18

“But in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” - Romans 8:37-39.

Last Saturday (Sabbath) we held a 'special' day – a Filipino celebration, here at Netherfield SDA Church. A wonderful day of fellowship, when many friends from university times in the Philippines were able to get reaquainted.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with today's blog Well, a lot really. You see, in the afternoon that day, we staged an informal 'family' concert. One of the performers was a young boy who volunteered to play a trumpet solo. He began well, then nerves got the better of him. From there he stopped and started....stopped and started, shaking his confidence. But never once was he tempted to throw in the towel and give up. He took deep breaths, focused, and persevered to the end – he'd committed himself to perform and he finished what he'd started. A courageous young man....and what a lesson for us all.

Watching him, it brought to mind some of the commitments we each make as part of our everyday lives – career, marriage, having children, property purchase etc. We make these commitments in good faith, never thinking that problems may occur and we may risk failure.

But what about our spiritual lives? There are those people who don't attend church yet in their hearts believe and trust in the goodness of God. There are others who have taken the next step of trust and committed their hearts and lives to God in baptism. In both cases problems arise – stop-start times when it would be so easy to give up and think we are failures.

Maybe problems are pressing down on you and you are beginning to think it would be much easier to just give up the struggle, do your own thing, live your own life. That option sounds tantalizingly good, doesn't it? - remember Adam and Eve and the apple! Yes, at times you may feel trapped in the belief that you're not good or worthy enough, but perseverance recognises setbacks, doubts and failures with their many periods of frustration and feelings of guilt – guilt at not quite making the grade.

As we all watched our young man doggedly attempt to complete his trumpet solo, we didn't hold his mistakes against him – we applauded him for his overall performance and determination to finish what he started. So it is with God. He takes no account of the blips and stumbles we make along the way, and the times when, let's face it, we plain let Him down. God is more interested in our long-term, life-long performance, our determination to finish what we started.

Philippians 1:6 (NIV) says: “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Today we have a song by Don Francisco, “I'll Never Let Go of Your Hand.” Click on the picture to listen.

       

     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