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8/4/2019 GUILDFORD Sermons Volume I February 2011
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Guildford
Sermons
Preached at S. Matthew’s Church February to May 2011
Volume I
February 2011
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6th
February 2011 : Epiphany 5 : Year A
7:45am and 9:00am Guildford
Isaiah 58:1-9a : 1 Corinthians 2:1-13 : Matthew 5:13-20
One of my favourite sayings is the sign that the
psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung, hung above the gateway to
his home. Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit Called and
not-called, God will be there.
This is the God whose presence is a given, who accomplishes
the divine will and purpose through the hearts and hands and
minds of faithful people of every generation, time and place.
This God – our God – is present eternally because that is
what the Living God does – be present.
With such a God we cannot buy, sell, bribe, cajole,
manipulate divine behaviour. As the Living God warns the
folk in Isaiah‟s time:
ISA 58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fightand to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
ISA 58:5 Is such the fast that I choose,a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
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and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
What wants has nothing to do with the kind of formulaic
practices that even today plague the spiritual life of the
Church and no doubt many another religion. This is what we
hear through Isaiah:
ISA 58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:to loose the bonds of injustice,to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,and to break every yoke?
ISA 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
If any of that sounds familiar, it ought to! It‟s one of the
passages that lie behind Jesus‟ “my yoke is easy” saying and
his proclamation of justice to the oppressed in Luke‟s gospel.
Jesus may also have had this passage in mind when he said,
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
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dark places – even if it meant ignoring or blatantly
disregarding the regulations.
And no, it is no argument to say that he was Jesus, therefore
he could do that sort of thing but we can‟t. What Jesus did, he
did as an example of how we, his followers, should behave.
In an age when righteousness – having a good, open,
authentic relationship with the Living God – was a matter of
obeying commands and commandments, as if righteousness
were accessible through the application of the correct formula
– in such an age, Jesus told us to use our commonsense and
remember whose needs were most important – the needy, the
oppressed, the under-privileged.
That‟s why he can make what otherwise would be an absurd
and ridiculous statement about not abolishing the law or the
prophets. Just as Isaiah centuries before Jesus tried to drag an
ancient faith community out of the dungeon of thoughtless
and automatic regulation, Jesus also tried to distinguish
between the useful and proper elements of order on the one
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hand, and the real business of God which those regulations
sought to underpin.
In other words, the ordering thoughts of the law and the
prophets was meant to be the solid foundation upon which to
do the proper work of God. It was never meant to be the
churlish replacement of social justice. And time and again, by
word and example, Jesus reminds is of that distinction – how
the foundation is to remain so that what it actually stands for
can be accomplished in our own Jesus-driven actions in this
terribly damaged world.
Paul, using slightly different language, reminds us also that
what is at stake here is the difference between the human and
the spiritual. As human beings we typically seek security and
comfort in the worst sense of the word. Law and regulation
are surface-layer easy things. We do or we don‟t. If we don‟t,
we get into trouble. End of story. Do not pass Go; do not
collect $200.
The things of the Spirit, however, are far less predictable and
pay no attention at all to what might be easy or couch-potato
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comfortable. When the Spirit settles on the law and the
prophets their most profound nature becomes apparent and
suddenly we are recognising fulfilment – perhaps Matthew‟s
gospel‟s favourite theme – recognising what these regulations
are actually trying to say, how they are telling us how to
behave truly as creatures made in the image and likeness of
the Living God.
As our world and our nation struggles with disasters that are
both natural in origin and human-made, it is all the more
important to understand our role – our crucial role – in
shining the light of God‟s presence into these places of
despair and darkness and chaos. At times like these – floods
in Carnarvon and Queensland and Victoria, for instance –
people often cry in exasperation and rage, Where was God! as
if God only turns up when a nice little shiny sunbeam sidles
into view.
And the answer is always – God is here, right here, in the
midst of suffering, in those who offer assistance and
compassion, who feed the hungry, clothe the sodden, comfort
the terrified and grieving. That is the Living God at work.
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That is where the Living God calls each of us to be – not
necessarily in the flooded towns and cities of our country, but
certainly among those who suffer.
This is our God, the One we claim to believe in. The One
who is present, called and not called. Vocatus atque non
vocatus Deus aderit. Called and not called, God will be there.
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13th
February 2011 : Epiphany 6 : Year A
7:45 and 9:00 Guildford
Deuteronomy 10:12-22 : 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 : Matthew 5:21-37
It‟s commonly held that when the men and women
responsible for the lectionary assemble the readings they do
so on the basis that all four pieces of scripture are related in
some way. Sometimes this is reasonably apparent; sometimes
one scratches one‟s head and tears out the remaining fistfuls
of hair trying to extract a meaningful relationship between the
readings.
Fortunately it‟s not too bad this week. The portion from
Deuteronomy offers counsel on living faithfully with God.
The author reminds the people that they are chosen, that Godmade a deliberate decision to single out the Jewish nation as
the recipients of a promise of prosperity and growth.
But the sub-text – the „reading between the lines‟ part – is that
this growth and prosperity does depend on remaining in a
goodly relationship with the Living God. The basis of that
relationship is „fear of the LORD‟, a concept easily-
misunderstood and – confused.
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Fearing God is not about „being afraid‟ of God. That is one of
the very last things that God wants from the faithful, whether
they be Jewish in this case, or Christian. It‟s certainly easy
enough to paint God as fearsome and worthy of our terror.
The Church has sadly become expert at slandering the Living
God through centuries of verbal and psychological abuse,
portraying God as vengeful and cruel, threatening the people
with eternal divine punishment if they transgressed man-
made laws or failed to adhere to clerical demands.
Parents in past times have similarly abandoned God‟s love as
very clearly and plainly seen in the life and work of Jesus, in
favour of God-the-Bogeyman, a nasty, vindictive Being who
metes retribution upon the recalcitrant and uncooperative. It‟s
still psychological abuse.
And also far from scripture‟s truth and teaching.
To fear God is quite simply to hold God in awe, to regard
God with the deepest respect, to understand that God is the
Creator and that no thing and no human can exist without
God‟s awesome Spirit of life and creative energy.
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But we should not assume that God is some kind of wimp;
that is clearly not the case. It is much easier to be violent than
loving. It is easier to be abusive than tender.
Equally, let‟s not assume we witness God‟s power only in
those things and events that are obviously overwhelming, like
many natural phenomena – tsunami, fire, sunsets … We do
actually see – and feel – God‟s great power in even the
smallest act of lovingkindness. Do not underestimate either a
smile or the powerful affect it can have.
Many would know the story of the South African archbishop,
Trevor Huddleston, who once treated a black boy with respect
and dignity – treated him as if he were a human being made
in the image and likeness of the Living God. That black boy
in South Africa was impressed. He was awestruck – as well
he might have been, having experienced God‟s love firsthand
through one of God‟s servants. That black boy in South
Africa is today known to millions as Desmond Tutu.
Let no one ever underestimate the power of even a pinpoint‟s
worth of God‟s love. It is truly awesome.
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When we arrive at the gospel we find Jesus working his way
through what tradition calls the sermon on the mount. But
take any portion of these sayings and counsel, and we begin
to hear echoes of Deuteronomy. The latter is more compact in
form, certainly, whereas Jesus expands and provides
examples and illustrations.
However, it‟s the same mode as that of Deuteronomy:
proffering wisdom in order to help the faithful maintain a
close and authentic relationship with the Living God. It‟s this
fact that underscores both passages but it‟s tempting to focus
on Jesus‟ words as if they provide only some kind of moral
imperative. That isn‟t the case, even though this is how for
centuries we have chosen to understand what Jesus is saying.
It isn‟t as though we should ignore the echoes of moral
thinking in Jesus‟ words. But we do need to understand that
Jesus‟ primary concerns were always spiritual; he was not a
moralist, despite the way we portray him, because it‟s far
easier to cast Jesus in the role of 1st Century Lawmaker and
craft our own Pharisaic ordinances than it is to seek the
depths of relationship about which Jesus is really speaking.
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This wisdom Jesus shares with those who are listening
appears to be about how to live in an ordered society. But the
importance of what he says concerns how to live with God.
It‟s an exacting demand. Jesus lets no one escape with the
biggest and most obvious transgression. Why? Because every
part of our relationship with God matters. Therefore we can‟t
escape with a self-congratulatory „I‟m not a murderer‟ if we
harbour unexpressed, simmering anger. It doesn‟t even have
to be that dramatic: an insult is enough to throw out the
relationship. Why? Because each person is God‟s creation
and God creates each person in the divine image-and-
likeness. We all have an intrinsic worth and value because
God created us. To put it plainly – to insult another is no
different in Jesus‟ eyes from insulting the Living God.
But not all of what Jesus says here has a literal focus. His
thinking with regard to amputation is figurative. It‟s a
powerful statement and we don‟t need a film like 127 hours
(about the guy who cut off his right arm with a pen knife after
a boulder trapped his arm) – we don‟t need that kind of
graphic, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination example to
understand that if something is coming between us and God
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then we need to do everything we can to remove that
obstacle.
What Jesus is doing is allowing the laws of the past to open
up and flower with their deeper meaning, and at the same
time he is stamping his authority on scripture and society and
human-divine relationship in a way that is both astonishing
and risky. From Matthew‟s point of view, this is Jesus
fulfilling the Law and the prophets – explaining what lies
beneath the bald statements and demanding that we do more
than simply treat „stuff‟ in the easy, lackadaisical way of the
untroubled literalist.
…Because God is not easy. God makes demands, and it is
only through wrestling and wrestling hard with God‟s
demands that we approach fulfilment ourselves and discover
the fulfilling depths of a true relationship with the Living
God.
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20th
February 2011 : Epiphany 7 : Year A
7:45am and 9:00am Guildford
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18 : 1 Corinthians 3:10-17 : Matthew 5:38-48
I‟m a perfectionist. That doesn‟t mean that I necessarily do
anything particularly well. By definition perfectionists can
never achieve the sparkling brilliance to which they aspire:
whatever it is is never quite good enough, never quite hits the
exact spot. It‟s quite a liability in many ways.
The good thing about perfectionism is that those who find
themselves enmeshed within its sticky tentacles actually do
care about doing a decent job. It may have its debilitating
aspects, but perfectionism, though extreme, is one way to
guard against being slipshod and lackadaisical.
But perfectionism isn‟t what the Living God asks us to
practise. It may sound like from the final sentence in today‟s
gospel: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is
perfect .
What an amazing concept! Jesus makes it sound so easy, so
doable. The words seem to slide effortlessly off his tongue as
if being perfect as God is perfect is just another matter-of-fact
thing we do as we go about our daily business.
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It‟s doubtful if anyone in their right mind would consider
putting themselves on the same plane as God. It‟s even more
doubtful that any sane person would claim the ability to
match even the most remote or minute ability of the Living
God.
And yet, here it is. Here is Jesus saying, Do it . He doesn‟t say,
“I think it would be a jolly good idea, chasps, if you were to
have a crack at being a tad more God-like. How about – oh, I
don‟t know – being perfect as God is perfect?”
What he does say begins with an imperative – a command, an
order. One little word – Be. Be perfect, he says. No if‟s, but‟s
or excuses. It‟s not negotiable.
As is so often the case the difficulty lies within the twenty-
odd centuries that separate the speaking/writing down of
these words ascribed to Jesus, and what we in 21st Century
Guildford hear or see when the text arrives within our
consciousness.
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Perfect we hear. And we know what this terrible word fraught
with unrealistic, unrealised and unrealisable expectations
means. We hear perfect and we think “unblemished”, “free
from defect”, “beyond reproach” and similar fantasy
formulations.
But this isn‟t quite what the word we translate as perfect
means in holy scripture. In biblical terms, perfect “simply”
means “complete”, “finished”. So when Jesus invites us to be
perfect as God is perfect he isn‟t asking the impossible
transformation that would make us beings other than human.
He‟s inviting us to seek completeness, to attend to all aspects
of our human interactions and relationships rather than
leaving bits and pieces here and there undone, unfinished.
That‟s nice, of course. But it isn‟t as all-encompassing as it
sounds. It was one of my former spiritual directors who
pointed out to me that when we encounter this invitation to be
perfect as God is perfect, what Jesus is actually inviting us to
do is to be perfect in love, perfect in loving – to love
completely, without discrimination.
Jesus gives an excellent and inarguable illustration:
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You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate
your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for
he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the
righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you,
what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing
than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
In the words of the TV prophet: You can‟t say fairer than
that…
This is what completeness – perfection – in love and loving is
about. Being non-discriminating, offering to all people – and
many would add, all creation – the same attitude of caring
and respect that most of us find it reasonably manageable to
make happen for those we “like” anyway.
No one is saying this is easy. Let‟s face it, some folk just “get
up our noses”; some are hostile and aggressive; some behave
in ways that we find offensive or abhorrent, even if they
aren‟t nasty to us directly. How do we love such people?
It‟s helpful to understand that love in the sense that Jesus
means and practises is far less about the commonly-assumed
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warm-fuzzy feelings that the popular media spins out day by
day by day, than about choice and decision. Most of the
media stuff is easy because it‟s inauthentic and based on
fantasy and sentimentality. In other words, it has little or
nothing to do with real-life, real-world experience.
Any parent knows what real-world love is about. Our
children – who are never perfect in the non-biblical sense –
receive our love no matter what they do. We may shrink from
their behaviour but it takes something almost cataclysmically
awful to make us stop loving them. I know from my own
experience that becoming a parent was one of the most
powerful lessons I received in understanding how and why
the Living God loves creation, especially humankind.
In his small but powerful book, Caring , the Anglican priest
and Jungian analyst, Morton Kelsey, includes a poignant
chapter in which he describes how he came to realise that he
didn‟t love one of his daughters. For whatever reason – I
don‟t think he even knew – he was aware of the dark abyss
where usual parental love ought to have been. So he made the
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decision to do everything he could to start loving this
daughter.
He makes it clear that he doesn‟t mean “liking” her. He
means LOVING her. Loving who she is for no other reason
than because she is. Unconditional. Full-stop.
Many would find it surprising that we can decide or choose to
love someone. We‟re bombarded with the notion that love is
“just” a feeling and we have no control over it.
But biblical love – the love that Jesus invites us into – isn‟t
just a feeling. And we do have control over it. It‟s this control,
this aspect of deciding and choosing that enables us to do
what at face-value seems unlikely or maybe even impossible
– to love those we might never consider worthy of our love.
Maybe it‟s the local chapter of the bikie club; maybe it‟s
indigenous Australians, or working girls; maybe it‟s dole
bludgers or boat people or even terrorists… Yes. Jesus
invites us to love terrorists too. Maybe it‟s that uncle who
molested us when we were growing up…
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And the thing we need to hear loud and clear is that loving
someone is NOT the same as condoning reprehensible
behaviour. Jesus wants to remind us that it is the person, the
human being whom we love and that they are separate from
their behaviour. In the world of psychology and counselling,
Narrative Therapy coins the following axiom: The Problem is
not the Person. In other words, whatever problems the client
might have, who they are as a human being is distinct and
separate from those issues. I am Alistair; I am NOT my
depression. Tina is NOT her alcoholism. Mildred and Hugo
are NOT their cancer…
Morton Kelsey discovered that by deciding, by choosing to
love his daughter something positive did happen. Their
relationship did improve. He was able to say that he loved
this young women, his daughter, whom he had almost excised
from his life. All because he made a decision to do so.
This is what Jesus does in his life and work on earth. Every
day, every moment of every day, he is choosing to love. He
does not discriminate on any basis imaginable. He does have
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enemies; they do behave badly and with extreme prejudice.
But he continues to choose to love them.
On the same basis, Leviticus also legislates respect and non-
discrimination for all people, whoever they are, Jew and non-
Jew, alien or compatriot. In the scriptures about Jesus it‟s
called love – but it amounts to the same reality of decision
and choice.
Who in our lives do we need to remember, to remind
ourselves to decide, to choose to love…?
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27th
February 2011 : Epiphany 8 : Year A
7:45am and 9:00am Guildford
Isaiah 49:8-16a : 1 Corinthians 3:18 – 4:5 : Matthew 6:22-34
I‟m trawling through a set of photographs purporting to
represent the Academy Award winners in the Best Actor
category. And I‟m thinking, Have I been living in a parallel
universe for the last ten or twenty years? because I don‟t
recognise half the movies in which these august gentlemen
apparently appeared.
Then I come across Michael Douglas and Wall Street . That
was the movie that gave the world the notorious “greed is
good” speech that Douglas‟s character, the wonderfully-
named Gordon Gekko, delivers unto his shareholders during acrucial moment in the film. By the that time in the movie we
know enough about Mr Gekko to realise that his words are
more than rhetoric and hyperbole: when he repeats the catch-
phrase, Greed is Good , he means it.
And then, as I ran an eye or two over Paul‟s jottings to the
folk in Corinth, I read these words:
For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world
or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you
belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
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And I started thinking about old Gordon back in Wall Street,
chanting his mantra, Greed is good . “All belongs to you,”
writes Paul. Marvellous! thinks Gordon. Yeah! Greed is good.
All belongs to me!
Unfortunately for the Gordon Gekko‟s of the world, what
Paul writes isn’t a statement supporting ruthless corporate
takeovers. It‟s a subtle paradox, whose meaning depends on
two things.
First, none of the “all” that belong to us is a possessable
commodity that we can personally acquire, accumulate and
dispose of at will; because, second, the very reason that all
CAN belong to us is because we lay no claim whatever to it.
Buddhists call this freedom from desire. Desire, yearning,
greed for material possessions or emotional exclusivity. Yes,
we do need things like shelter and food and love: neither
Jesus nor Paul nor Isaiah nor any of the great world religions
are saying otherwise. But what they are saying is that our true
freedom lies in putting these things in perspective. The
Marxist formula puts it succinctly – and rightly: To each
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according to their need; from each according to their ability.
Which is exactly what Jesus‟ followers practised in Jerusalem
immediately after Jesus‟ Ascension.
What lies behind this desire for possession and exclusivity is,
in 20th and 21st century terminology, our need for security – a
need that we have skewed and twisted beyond what is basic
and reasonable. And not only that. In the process, holy
scripture tells us, we have forgotten or ignored or avoided,
willfully or otherwise, the true source of our yearned-for
security.
The fact that this stuff pops up in both the Hebrew and the
Christian scriptures is a reminder – and maybe a relief – that
humankind has not changed much in all these centuries. We
know how often we see or hear advertisements about
superannuation in the media. Compare the pair and choose
the best nest for your eggs!
And if Jesus today spoke the words we hear in the gospel in a
public auditorium other than a church building we might well
think we‟ve landed in a lecture on cognitive behavioural
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therapy. Because that‟s basically what Jesus is doing – trying
to help us retrain our thinking about this feisty issue of
security, guiding us away from our negative thinking and
cognitive distortions.
For instance, we might think, I should be able to eat
whenever I feel hungry, and get a new pair of shoes as soon
as these ones are a bit scuffed . But is that true? Where‟s the
rule book for that sort of thing?
Sometimes we can only eat when it‟s meal time and maybe
having a glass of water is better for us than food. And that‟s
okay. Sometimes we have to tolerate scuff marks or learn
how to disguise them. And that‟s okay too.
Jesus of course adds another level to this sort of thing. He
reminds us that the source of our security – the place all
security comes from – the beginning and end and everything
in between – is the Living God. He reminds us of God‟s love.
He reminds us – using pure logic – that the God who cares for
even the birds of the air and the lilies of the field will also
care for the creature who is far more complex and
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demanding, the creature made in the divine image-and-
likeness – us human beings.
The passage from Isaiah gives the same message in these
lovely words:
But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me,
my Lord has forgotten me."
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands
What a marvellous image! We are indelibly part of who the
Living God is and our God will not and does not forget us or
our needs. Compare the pair? We can‟t do it – because the
Living God has no rival or equal-and-similar number. Find
the best nest for our retirement egg? We can‟t. No better nest
exists than the one God has created for us, in which we find
comfort and security every second of our lives.
Does this mean that we should just sit back, breathe our
proverbial sigh of relief and utter the immortal half-fallacy,
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“God will provide?” To quote from Paul: No way, Jose! Yes,
God will provide our needs. But God also expects us to use
our gifts and our abilities. That‟s one of the reasons God has
given us these things.
It‟s like the email joke that appears and reappears, as these
things tend to:
A good Christian bloke named Fred finds himself in diretrouble. His business has gone bust and he's in serious financial
trouble. He's so desperate that he decides to ask God for help.
He goes into his church and begins to pray:
- God, please help me, I've lost my business and if I don't get
some money, I'm going to lose my house as well, please let me
win the lotto.
Lotto night comes and somebody else wins it.
Fred goes back to the church.
- God, please let me win the lotto, I've lost my business, my
house and I'm going to lose my car as well.
Lotto night comes and Fred still has no luck!!
Back to the church.
- O God, why have you forsaken me? I've lost my business, my
house, my car and my wife and children are starving. I don't
often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to
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you. Why won't you just let me win the lotto this one time so I
can get my life back in order?
Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens openand Jacob is confronted by the very voice of GOD:
- FRED, MEET ME HALF WAY ON THIS ONE, BUY A
DARN TICKET!
Or, as Richard Harris‟s Oliver Cromwell tells his troops in his
warm-up speech on the eve of an important battle: “Put your
faith in God, and keep your powder dry…”
So. Are we worried about tomorrow? I know I am, quite
often. But I also know that I need to remind myself that God
can, will and DOES provide for my needs and those of my
family. AND that God does me the honour and courtesy of
NOT assuming that I am some helpless victim: I can do some
things – many things – in God‟s power; God steps in with the
impossible things. Together, we can do EVERYTHING! How
about you?
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