Proverbs 8:32. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways.
Oh Friends, our God surely does move in some mysterious and wonderful ways yes! Yesterday, after I finished writing the Bit, one of my uncles came to visit, then took me around town to straighten out some stuff. Now I had intended to go back to Tobago yesterday afternoon, however on Thursday when I bought the tickets to come to Trinidad by the ferry, I could only get one ticket for the return trip on Friday because of the weekend rush to go to Tobago. I could not even get a flight to Tobago on Friday, because all the planes were booked too. So the plan was go down to the ferry docks and do the stand by thing. But as the Lord would have it, I spoke to a couple friends and family by phone and they weren’t too thrilled that I had come to Trinidad for what amounted to only one day. Anyway, the long and short of the story is that I decided to spend another day in Trickidad. And was it ever a wise decision, because after I checked into the Capital Plaza Hotel, within walking distance to the ferry docks, we had a delightful lunch in the hotel’s restaurant with one uncle and his wife. Then another uncle showed up, one I had lived a bachelor’s life with some forty years ago, and we all sat down in the hotel’s foyer/bar area talking, laughing and reminiscing about old times. Meanwhile, a cousin was trying to get two tickets for the boat today, Saturday, which was reputedly also sold out. Eventually it was happy hour in the hotel and it got busy. But we were in the right place at the right time. (smile) Then I got a call to go down to the docks to get the ferry tickets. So the uncle with whom I lived ‘bache’, walked down to the docks with me, about two or three hundred yards along one of the main thoroughfares, Wrightson Road, with the Friday afternoon traffic in full swing. During the walk more reminiscing took place, but this time private stuff that we couldn’t share with the other family members. Hn! It sure has a lot of that! (smile) By the time we got back, a cousin had shown up, so you can imagine the commotion. And we stayed in the hotel foyer/bar area until 7 o’clock, only leaving because we had to come up and change to go to a Parang party that a friend had invited us to. The party was good, but we could not do it the justice it deserved since we were quite tired. Imagine there being a lot of food and drink, but me only picking at little bits of food, cause I’d been eating all afternoon and didn’t have my after lunch nap. Didn’t get home until minutes to twelve. And when I awoke, around 6.30, it was to a rainy, dreary-looking Saturday morning, with a crummy view of some big buildings over the street, blocking out most of the docks, and a construction site right down in front of me. But overall Friends, it was a delightful day! Thank You Lord! And I have some more people coming to visit me this morning, that’s why I can say from personal experience that our Bit is one of absolute truth. ‘Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways.’ Oh my people, how long are we going to let Beelzebub deceive us into following the ways of man and this evil world eh, which only leads to destruction, rather than that of Almighty God, which causes us to be immensely blessed, both now and in the hereafter? Following Beelzebub’s wiles and lies is a fool’s wisdom my Friends! Now listen to the psalmist, as he tells us the true story: ‘Praise ye the Lord (shout Hallelujah). Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon the earth; the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth (stands) forever.’ (Ps.112:1-3) Now my brethren, is there anything in Lucifer’s manifesto that can match those wonderful promises? Absolutely not! For Lucifer’s pleasures are fleeting and superficial, while those of Jehovah God have substance and last forever. Now hear James tell it: ‘But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed (what he does).’ (James 1:25) Oh my people, Lucifer or his cohorts can never make a truthful declaration like that! And these are the scholars’ comments on that verse. ‘The perfect law of liberty probably refers to the teachings of Christ and His Apostles. This law is perfect since Christ brought to completion the teachings and work of the Mosaic Law (cf. Matt.5:17-20; Rom.10:4). It is a law of liberty because it frees from the principles of sin and death (Rom. 8:2-3; Gal. 5:1,13). James also describes it as the royal law (2:8) for it is the law of the Messianic King (cf. Gal.6:2)’ Now, from the world’s most famous sermon, that from the Mount, listen to Jesus declare the awesome truth. ‘Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’ (Matt.7:21) I can’t add anything more to that Friends, except these observations of the scholars. ‘Not everyone professing Christ is genuinely saved. Even the outward verbal acknowledgement of His lordship is in itself not enough to save the unbeliever apart from true repentance and faith. A genuinely saved person is one that doeth the will of my Father, the Greek present tense suggesting that he is continually living in obedience to the will of God as the normal course of his life.’ There it is Friends in black and white! Spouting a lot of God centred stuff doesn’t automatically make you saved, you have to truly repent and then live in obedience to the Father after that. Therefore people, let’s sincerely aspire to not only talk the Christian talk, but even more importantly to walk it. Otherwise, we’re just fooling ourselves. Much LOVE!…But be ye doers of the word…and not hearers only…deceiving your own selves… (James 1:22)
