Imagine someone coming to you and saying, “Come quickly, the Supermarket in town is giving everything away free for ONE day. “ “I don’t believe it”, you say, “It’s impossible, they wouldn’t do that.” 

Later, your friends call and say, “Look at all these free goods we've received from the Supermarket today, you should have come!” You start to say, “But I didn’t know that it was true…..I thought it wasn’t possible”, but by now you know you should have listened.

Has anyone ever told you about God? Has anyone ever said that God is real, that His gifts of love, peace, health, freedom, happiness, pardon, eternal life and much, much more are free to those who decide to believe what they have heard?

God’s gifts are not free for just one day, they are free FOREVER. From the very moment of your decision to believe in God, and that he is waiting to shower you with limitless goodness, his gifts are yours forever.

It is not worth laying aside your own thoughts and opinions for even a second so that you don’t miss out on the greatest gifts of all?

ROMANS 11: 29

Turning The Tide

Life isn’t always lived on an even keel. Many of us have experiences that would have us leaning over so far that we feel we will never recover enough to stand upright again.

When this happens where do we put our hope or trust? Maybe we have supportive family members, or doctors, or just really good friends who help to take the strain. But sometimes even those wonderful people cannot fully understand what we need. 

In Jesus we have the most perfect of friends. The greatest lifter of our spirits, companion in our loneliness and healer of our bodies. He holds the keys waiting to unlock our prisons of guilt, fear, anxiety and depression and, once the door is open, we will never be alone again.

The above photo shows boats that have fallen over when the tide went out. Some need the pier for support. Some just lie helplessly in the mud. 

Just as we know for certain that the tide will come in again and re-float the boats, we can also know that Jesus can flood our lives with His love, compassion, healing and whatever else we need to live buoyant lives again.

Ask Jesus into your life today and be assured that, whenever you feel that you are left high and dry by your circumstances, He will turn the tide for you and lift you from the mud.

Psalm 34: 4 (Click link)

Just As He Was

I recently wandered around the local flower park with my camera and was so pleased to see a blackbird scuttling in and around small bushes and budding bulbs. It was beautifully black. So very black in contrast to its yellow beak and the yellow around its eye. It seemed quite tame and posed on a low wall while I tentatively clicked hoping to get a well focused shot in the cold wind.

At home I transferred my photos to the computer. I thought the photo had come out well and gave it a little extra enhancement. I was so thrilled with the loveliness of this plain black bird that I failed to notice at first that it's beak was dirty where it had been poking in the wet soil for worms. I thought about cloning out the dirt with Photoshop so that it's beak would be perfectly yellow and the photo would look better, but I couldn't do it. This lovely bird had allowed me to see that picking at the ground for food was all part of its own special life and I had captured that.

Then, I thought, why do we feel that we can't go to God or ask Him into our lives unless we are faultless and clean? We hesitate to call on Him for anything thinking we won't be heard or answered as we haven't been the person we erringly believe he wants us to be. We are so acceptable to God even with dirty hands and unscrubbed minds. He wants us to communicate with Him regardless of all our flaws and shortcomings. He takes us as we are and with one little wipe of His redeeming love he makes us clean.

The blackbird was just being a blackbird with his little dirty beak. He didn't ask me to wait until he washed his face before I took the photo. God knows what our lives are like. He knows we get dirty sometimes. Don't wash for Him, don't cover up or Photoshop the mess off. He's already seen it and, guess what, He still loves and wants us. His acceptance of us is without question. He waits eagerly to show us what real love and acceptance is. 

Below is a link to a wonderful version of 'Just As I Am'.

Click for Video 'Just As I Am'.

The Longing

The young priest held lightly to his small prayer book. He pondered the decision he had made which had brought him to this scantily furnished room. A room without distractions. A room for contemplation.

His decision to follow God had not been forced but born of a desire to give back to the One who had given him life and the beautiful world in which to live it.

But somehow despite a comfortable contentment he could feel a longing for......he couldn’t find the answer.

But why was he thinking like this? Here was a sudden and unexpected deviation of thought. It didn’t follow his usual unvarying pattern. God was still God, the same wonderful God, but what had changed? 

As he looked out of the window he saw an eagle in flight high above the forest. Nothing God created could soar like the eagle. Magnificient, dominant, untouchable. Did the eagle, so high and so free, feel close to God up there, he wondered? 

That was it! There was the answer! Despite the necessary solitude and his unwavering dedication to the study of God’s word, he had drifted from God’s presence. He hadn’t imagined that could ever happen. The longing in his heart was for the warmth, the companionship, the irreplaceable presence of God. 

He put down his prayer book and in his small earthly room, which he and God had shared so blissfully, he felt his heart begin to glow and his spirit began to soar.