The Importance of Living in the Light and Presence of Jesus Christ!

30 Nov 2024 Leave a comment

by randyobrien50 in Christian Thoughts and Inspiration., Daily Devotion, Daily Inspiration, Inspirational Living, Spiritual Living Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John 3:20.       For every one that doeth (practices) evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds shall be reproved (exposed).

Yes friends, on this last day of November, our lazy-day Saturday has arrived, windy and cold, but with more sunshine than cloud, and we’ll take it however it comes, for we can laze around in any kind of weather. (smile) And I did manage to get in some early morning laziness, so I’m not feeling too envious of those of you who can afford to spend the whole day doing nothing. But enough laziness, let’s get to the Lord’s business, and offer up our Lazy-Day Saturday Prayer with all sincerity and truth.

 As one voice: ‘Lord, I want to be with You now. Please slow my thoughts and quiet my soul. Let my muscles relax, my breath deepen. You are here with me – Your peace and LOVE are present. I marvel to think You can’t be contained, that Your LOVE both surrounds and fills me. Thank You for this tenderness, Lord. I praise You for Your unceasing nearness. Increase my awareness of You today, that I may know You all the more. Amen!’ 

And it’s always a wonderful experience to come into the amazing presence of our great God; to get into deeper intimacy with Him, for that’s His greatest desire. So let’s never forget that He made us to have deep intimacy with Him, to LOVE Him as He LOVES us! The Lord needed a creation to LOVE, to show His great kindness and compassion to, in return for obedience and loyalty. And there’s nothing that warms the cockles of His heart like His creation seeking deeper intimacy with Him. 

It’s unfortunate though, that with the free will He also gave us, not many of His creation are using it to choose Him, but rather to choose the sinful pleasures and evil deeds of the world controlled by the fallen angel Lucifer. It obviously breaks His heart to see so many of us falling under the evil spell of the great deceiver, but thankfully our God is the God of hope, hoping that many more, if not all of us, will one day receive His Son, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. 

Listen, as Peter spells it out in his second epistle. ‘But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ (2 Pet. 3:8-10) 

Oh my people, the Lord in His everlasting kindness is giving us a long time to come to repentance and thus obtain salvation, for He will prefer that none of His most marvellous creation suffers hellfire and damnation. However, He will not wait forever, and after the many warnings He’s given us, one day, Jesus will simply appear unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, bringing with the Him the final judgement of man. And if you’re still an acolyte of Satan, then you will suffer the same punishment as him, being cast into the lake of fire, with eternal separation from Almighty God. 

Now that is the worst thing that can ever happen to a human soul, which means you need to repent and receive salvation as soon as possible, in fact RIGHT NOW, for who knows if Jesus will return to Rapture us sometime today, and if you’re not ready, then crapaud smoke yuh pipe! You’ll have to go through the Great Tribulation which will be nothing like the earth has ever seen before, and after that, the judgement! 

So, wouldn’t it be much better to be amongst this lot as Bruh Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump (trumpet) of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever (always) be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.’ (1 Thess. 4:16-18) 

Oh my fellow believers, those are indeed comforting words! How can they not be? Knowing that when Christ returns to rapture His church that those of us who held on to Him till the very end, both dead and alive will rise to meet Him in the skies certainly gives one comfort and encouragement to stay strong and live for Christ despite the many trials and tribulations we will face in this evil and ungodly world. 

And I like this brief commentary on the Rapture: ‘When Christ enters the cloud, he brings us with him, not just the first disciples. As he took on our humanity and took it to the cross, so he brings us into the presence and glory of God. As he pours grace upon us, he makes us sharers in the Divine Presence.’ Now what could be better than that eh? Absolutely nothing!  

And yuh know the whole thing is not rocket science nuh, but simple common sense, for if the sinful pleasures of this world are short-lived, and Satan has nothing to eventually offer but hellfire and damnation, why take up with him eh? Why subjugate yourselves to his awful lies, deceits and half-truths of which he is a master. On the other hand, if you adhere to Jesus then you will probably enjoy a tough but decent life down here on earth, then a marvellous one with Him in heaven for all eternity. There’s absolutely no comparison! Jesus wins hands down every time! 

But, for whatever reason, many of us seem enamoured with the keeper of the darkness and live for him. I guess it’s like Jesus said: ‘And this is the condemnation, that (the) light is come into the world, and men LOVED darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. For every one that doeth (practices) evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds shall be reproved (exposed). But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.’ (John 3:19-21) 

Oh, my fellow saints, that’s a marvellous note for us to end on today! So please, let’s spend some of our lazy-day Saturday time pondering the truth of those words as they apply to us nuh. Are our deeds evil, thus we hide from the light…or are our deeds filled with truth, and thus we are guided like a moth to the flame of Christ? It’s time to take serious account of our spiritual condition! Much LOVE!

…we were granted wisdom and free will…that we could choose…eternal life with Christ…not eternal death with Satan…

Hear our podcast at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/randy-obrien

Today’s Scrip-Bit 16 August 2019 John 1:5.

16 Aug 2019 Leave a comment

by randyobrien50 in Christian Thoughts and Inspiration., Daily Devotion, Daily Inspiration, Inspirational Living, Spiritual Living Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

John 1:5.    ​And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended (apprehended) it not.
 

Welcome to a glorious Friday friends! And it’s all the Lord’s doing on our behalf! All praise and glory to His holy name! So please, let’s make the effort, show the necessary gratitude and rejoice and be glad in it nuh! That’s the only wise and sensible thing to do in light of His wonderful gesture. But yuh know, sometimes it seems that the unbelievers are more grateful for the good days they enjoy than we believers. 

Listen to the ordinary workingman, as he sings his Friday song nuh. ‘TGIF! Thank God is Friday oui! My most favourite day, because it heralds the start of the weekend, where my time is my own, to do with as I like and please. And I can tell anybody to go jump in the lake if I don’t like their suggestions for how I’m spending, or planning to spend my time! 

And it sure feels good when you can tell some farse or nosy somebody to mind their own business! Too many people in this world today don’t have no business of their own, or just like to mind other people’s business! Chuh! I don’t mind theirs, so why they have to bother with mine eh? But enough about them yes! Today is Friday, and it bright and sunshiny, so me and mine going to enjoy it to the fullest. 

I’m even going to take a half-day off from the slave master work – tough if he doh like it – and go home and spend it with the children. Might even take them down to the Ex; that big country fair down by the CNE grounds on the Lakeshore. They would certainly enjoy that! But let’s see how the day plays out nuh, before we make any firm commitments. We’ll just be thankful that it’s Friday and the start of the weekend! Praise God for that yes!’ 

Ah mih fellow saints, how many of us get so excited about another supposed ordinary day eh? Not too many of us, who are supposed to be the most joyful people in the world. But we not going to preach on the subject (smile), let’s just chant our Friday Chant, sing our weekend song. 

As one, strong voice now: ‘Oh Lord, thanks for getting me safely through another week of work! It hasn’t been easy, but with your generous help, I made it through. Now, please help me to get sufficient fun, fellowship, rest and relaxation in these two short days off, so that I can be renewed and refreshed in soul, body and mind, to go back out and do it all over again next week, furthering your glorious kingdom with each step I take. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen!’ 

Yeh, it’s not as enthusiastic and colourful as the workingman’s offering, but it sure does keep us on the straight and narrow. And today, I want to share the scriptures I had planned to share yesterday when the Lord guided me in a different direction. It’s the same Bit: ‘And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended (apprehended) it not.’ And unfortunately that hasn’t changed much since John wrote that some two thousand years ago. And why is that eh? 

Possibly because as Jesus explains: ‘And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men LOVED darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth (practices) evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deed should be reproved (exposed).’ (John 3:19-20) And isn’t that the awesome truth my fellow believers? We hide what we don’t want others to see in the darkness, behind closed doors. 

But please remember Jesus’ warning: ‘Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets (secretly in inner rooms) shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.’ (Luke 12:1b-3) 

Oh my people, all the things we hide and do in the darkness will one day be revealed publicly! And besides the Lord sees them when we do them now, so what’s the purpose of hiding eh? As they say, our true self is reflected in what we do in darkness, behind closed doors, when no one else is around. So anything else we do differently in the light is pure hypocrisy. 

As the scholars explain: ‘12:1-2. Hypocrisy, piety just for the sake of appearance is futile; for even hidden motives will one day be laid bare by God.’  Please believe that my people, and let’s try our best to only deal with true and godly motives, it will pay big dividends for us in the long run. Now let’s see how many of those original scriptures on light we can get in now, because the Bit’s again gone in a slightly different direction than I had planned. (smile) 

And I guess the best one to begin with is Bruh David’s proclamation in Psalm 27: ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?’ (Ps.27:1) Not a single soul my people! Then in Psalm 119, the psalmist declares: ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.’ (Ps.119:105) So true friends, the Lord’s Word is our guidebook for earthly living! 

And Isaiah declares: ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.’ (Is.5:20) Yuh better believe it! And what better way to end than with John’s poignant declaration: 

‘This the is the message which we have heard of him (Jesus), and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not (practice) the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ (1 John 1:5-7) 

Please friends, let’s ponder on those oh significant and important words today nuh, and see if we’re truly walking in the light or just fooling ourselves, and actually walking in darkness. But whatever answer we get, please let’s also ask the Lord for His awesome help to truly walk in His Light. That’s wisdom of undeterminable proportions! Much LOVE!

…you can’t truly walk in the Light of Christ…and in the darkness of Satan…at the same time…