The promise and power of faith

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

Charles de Gaulle, the famous French leader during World War Two, had a child who was severely mentally handicapped. But he loved her dearly and, no matter how bad things were in France, he would always make time to be with his wife and their daughter. Every night, after they’d put her to bed, his wife would say: ‘Why couldn’t she have been like the others?’ Well, as predicted, the little girl died in her youth. They had a private graveside service, and, after the priest had pronounced the benediction, everyone departed except his wife. De Gaulle went back to her and said: ‘Come, Evonne. Did you not hear the blessing of the priest? Now she is like all the others.”
The Bible says that Jesus will one day transform our mortal bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. That is the promise and power of faith!

Posted in Death, Eternal life, Faith, Heaven, Hope of Glory, Life, Life's journey | Leave a comment

Dissolving into nothingness…or?

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

In parts of Africa they have a unique funeral custom whereby mourners stand around the casket and then, on a given signal, put a piece of peppermint into their mouths. As it dissolves they are reminded that life for that person is over and has dissolved into nothingness. In our society, also, there are people who believe that physical death means the end of everything. But for most of us – and for most people everywhere – there is an innate sense that this is not so, and that personality does not end at physical death.
For Christians, that sense of continuance goes even further. Nothing says it better than those words from the Bible which say: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love Him.’

Posted in Death, Eternal life, Eternity, funerals, Life | Leave a comment

Though I may not see and think of him, he never stops thinking of and loving me.

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

Writer Philip Yancey found an old photo of himself as a small child, which his mother kept amongst her treasured memories. It puzzled him why she kept that one when there were so many better pictures. She told him it was the one that his father had had fastened to the iron lung in which he’d spent the last months of his life. Lying there, paralysed by polio, with his son banned from the hospital, his only contact had been that photo hung directly before his eyes. Yancey says that photo is now the one link that connects him to the stranger who was his father; the man but who spent all day, every day thinking of him and loving him. And from that, he says, I have come to a deeper understanding of the love of God who, though I may not see and think of Him, never stops thinking of and loving me.

Posted in God's love, God's presence | Leave a comment

The only thing that really matters

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

Years ago, Harvard University began a study that has tracked the lives of three hundred former male students, paying close attention to the various physical, relational, psychological and spiritual factors that have shaped their lives. And now this study, called the Grant Study, is able to give a comprehensive viewpoint on what really affects men’s level of happiness over a lifetime. When asked what he’d learned from his years of poring over this data, psychiatrist George Vaillant, who directed the program for over four decades, and from whom you would expect a very complex answer, gave this breathtakingly simple answer: ‘The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships.’
Jesus said the same thing two millennia ago. ‘Love God and love your neighbour…that’s everything God asks of us.’

Posted in love, Loving God, Loving other people, relationships | Leave a comment

God has given His word

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

There’s an old Bedouin story of a young man who accidently killed another young man. Fearing retribution, he sought sanctuary in the tent of the tribal chief, who told him he’d be safe until the matter could be settled legally. Then the young man’s pursuers arrived, demanding he be turned over to them. However, the chief refused. ‘But you don’t know who he killed!’ they said. ‘I have given my word,’ the chief replied. Then they told him: ‘He killed your son!’ The chief was visibly shaken and stood speechless for some time. Finally, he said; ‘Then he shall become my son, and everything I have will one day be his.’
That ancient story illustrates what the gospel says about the love of God for us; undeserved yet freely given. God has given His word, and by faith we are now assured that we are His children.

Posted in Children of God, God, God's faithfulness | Leave a comment

God who suffers with us

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

When disaster strikes we often ask why God doesn’t do something.Tim Keller reported that after the Nine-Eleven tragedy, eight hundred new people began attending his Manhattan church and most wanted to know what God had to say about it. Keller said: ‘I preached that Christianity is the only faith that tells you that God lost a child in an act of violent injustice…and is the only religion that tells you that God suffered as we have suffered.” The Gospel does not so much offer solutions to the problems of suffering, but rather provides the promise of a God who is with us in our suffering and says, “You are not alone, I know what it’s like and I’m here with you.” As an emergency service volunteer once said to me: ‘God may not have been in the disaster, but he sure was there in the rescue.

Posted in God, God with us, Suffering, Suffering love | Leave a comment

Takeovers

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

In the world of business, it sometimes happens that a failing corporation gets taken over by another that’s not much better, and both of them go under. On the other hand, a strong company may take over one with serious weaknesses and bad debts, and the weaker company benefits from its power and strength. Sometimes even nations do this, like when the crumbling former East Germany united with West Germany.
It also illustrates what happens when people link their lives to Jesus. He takes over our moral and spiritual debts and in their place gives us forgiveness and a new start, empowered by his own presence. The crucial factor is being smart enough to know that we are going under and willing enough to reach out to the only one with the spiritual resources to do something about it.

Posted in Forgiveness, Jesus, New Life, New start | Leave a comment

Directions that get you lost

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

Doug Lansky likes to collect photos of confusing road signs, like the one that says: Not a Through Street, but has below it a white arrow pointing straight ahead and the words: Evacuation Route; and another that says: Invisible Fence Now Open. No wonder drivers get confused.
But it’s not only government departments that attempt to give guidance but end up creating confusion. Over the past two thousand years the Christian church has grown from its humble beginnings to be a complex organism which attempts to express the good news of God’s love through accumulated layers of dogma, which often leave people more confused than ever. But, as the great theologian Karl Barth said on his deathbed, essentially, it all comes down to this: ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’

Posted in direction, Dogma, God's love, Seeing Jesus | Leave a comment

What is success?

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

Malcolm Muggeridge was one of the most successful journalists of the twentieth century. For much of his life he was an agnostic, but an experience he had while making a documentary on the life of Jesus turned him into a believer. Towards the end of his life, referring to the degree of fame, fortune and fulfilment he’d known, he said this: ‘I may, I suppose, regard myself a relatively successful man…Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing – measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.’
‘Whoever drinks the water I give,’ said Jesus, ‘will never be thirsty again. It will become a spring welling up to eternal life.’

Posted in Achievement, emptiness, Eternal life, Futility, Jesus, Success, Superficial judgements | Leave a comment

Look up

Posted on July 25, 2017 by vincentsmithauthor

If you put a buzzard in a small pen that’s open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will stay a prisoner. The reason is that buzzards always begin a flight from the ground with a run of about four metres. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly. Bumblebees are a bit the same. If you drop one into an open glass tumbler, it will stay there until it dies. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom.
In many ways, we are like buzzards and bumblebees. We struggle with our problems and frustrations, forgetting that what we really need to do is look up and seek the wisdom of our creator. As the psalm says ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.’

Posted in Faith, God, God's faithfulness, Prisoners | Leave a comment