Devotionals

Psalm 103:11-12, NIV
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

I don’t think the Psalmist could have had any idea of the significance of what he was writing in these amazing words. All he could do was see the stars in the sky, without having any idea as to how far they were away, or, much more significantly, without any understanding of the fact that there is no limit to space beyond the stars. Without realising it he was saying that there is no limit to the love of God!

Then as far as the points of the compass are concerned, the north pole and the south pole are specific points on the surface of the earth. The distance between them is measurable. But not so, the east and the west! The distance between them is infinite. What an incredible picture of what God, in His love and mercy has done for us – he has removed our sins an immeasurable and infinite distance from us!

There is no limit to the love of God and no way for forgiven sins ever to catch up with us. God has dealt with them for all of time and all of eternity. I just love the Gospel message that is so dramatically illustrated by God’s creation.

Next time you look at the stars or fly round the world in a plane – just take a few minutes to marvel at our amazing God. He’s out of this world!!

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for all that you have done for me – for showing me such love and for dealing with my sin so comprehensively. You are amazing! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Parables of Harris – Book by Peter and Fiona Horrobin

Proverbs 2:7, NIV
He holds victory in store for the upright, He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for He guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.

Right now I am spending a lot of my time writing the daily notes for Ellel 365, the new on-line training school from Ellel Ministries that will be launching on the 1st July. Throughout this school my heart’s desire is to help people know how to walk in the ways of God, for if we truly walk on the path that He has laid out for us, then there are many, many promises in the Scripture of God’s blessings for His children.

All those blessings are an outworking of God’s covenant love. This one verse alone promises victory (in the battles of life) to those who are upright – that means those who deliberately make godly choices when facing temptation. Then we are promised a shield of protection if our walk is blameless. What does that mean? I believe it simply means that when our heart’s desire is always for God’s Kingdom authority to be established in our lives, that the angels of God will rejoice to be there for us – just as they were for Jesus in His wilderness experience being tested by the devil.

When setting sail for a long voyage, the most important thing we need to know is how to navigate. If we cannot set a true course we will be lost at sea forever. When we set out to be just and fair in all we think, say and do, God promises us His wisdom as we plot the course of our lives.

What tremendous blessings come from our walking in the ways of the Lord. Psalm 19:7 expresses the blessings in terms of revival! All over the world many of God’s people are crying out to Him for revival. But God’s Word tells us that we can have personal revival wherever we are – all that God looks for is the heart that is turned towards Him and a will that has chosen to respond in obedience to His love!

Prayer: Help me, Lord, to consistently choose to walk in your ways so that I may know your guidance and direction in the course of my life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Ellel 365 – Ellel Ministries Online Training School

Isaiah 58:4, NIV
You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Fasting is a good and valuable discipline. When the heart is rightfully in tune with God, it is a precious means of focusing our attention on God as we curtail our appetites for other things. Fasting sharpens one’s intercession and makes one spiritually more aware of the voice of God. Even the Bible can seem to come more alive as the Spirit of God quickens God’s truth to our own spirit.

But fasting, like every other act of religious discipline which is done with a wrong motive, breaks the heart of God, making people look pious and holy to men, who, in reality are far from it. Jesus reserved some of his harshest words for the Pharisees who made a show of religion, but who’s hearts were a million miles away from being in a right relationship with God. In Isaiah Chapter 1:15 also, Isaiah had to tell the people that God will not even listen to their prayers, because their hearts were so far from Him.

There are times when I have prayed with individuals about the problems they were having in their lives and often I have been forced to ask myself why their prayers in the past had not already been answered by God. For, surely, God loves His children and would long to hear the cry of their hearts and answer their very reasonable prayers.

But then God has led me to lift a particular stone, covering an area of their lives that was in darkness. And suddenly it all becomes clear as once again the question of the Psalmist comes into sharp focus, where he says in Psalm 24:3-4: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the Lord.”

If we are looking to God to hear and answer our prayers, let’s be sure we have got the basics of godly living in place, before we try and impact the throne of God with disciplines such as fasting.

Prayer: Lord, I want to have clean hands and a pure heart. Please expose darkness in my life so that I may clean out the dirt and come to you in repentance for forgiveness and cleansing. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Dynamic Praying – Teaching CD

1 Samuel 14:6-7, NIV
“Lets go across to those heathen Philistines”, Jonathan said to his armour bearer, “Perhaps the Lord will do a miracle for us. For it makes no difference to Him how many enemy troops there are!” “Do all that you have in mind”, his armour bearer said, “Go ahead, I am with you heart and soul”.

This is the story of the bravery of Jonathan and his armour bearer. His armour bearer was only a youth. He was fully submitted, loyal and obedient to Jonathan, even to the point of risking his own life.

Saul did a poor job as king, because of fear, and he seemed to have no communication with his Son, Jonathan. Saul’s weak leadership was a result of his spiritual decline. Effective leadership needs spiritual character.

Why did Jonathan go it alone? Maybe he was fed up with the long hopeless procrastination of his father. Jonathan knew God was a miracle-working God, even if the enemy powerfully outnumbered the two of them. They put their trust in God alone. God honoured their faith and gave them a tremendous victory.

Do you sometimes feel surrounded by overwhelming odds with the enemy looking all powerful? We can learn from Jonathan today to commit what resources we do have to God, to rely totally upon Him and He will surely give us the victory.

With God on our side we are always in ‘the majority’. But notice God did not initiate this event. Jonathan had a plan and his number two agreed to go with him. They killed 20 Philistines and panic struck the whole army of the Philistines and the ground shook. The Philistines were confused and started killing each other in their panic. God provided the miracle following Jonathan’s steps of faith.

Is God calling you to step out in faith? If you are truly being obedient to His voice, then as you walk forward today and initiate the action, God will bring the blessing and the victory.

Prayer: Dear Lord, please help me to have the faith to believe for the miracles and the victories that You have for me in my life. Give me the courage to get started by moving forward first. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

What are Your giants? – Teaching CD

Proverbs 16:12-13, NIV
Kings detest wrongdoing, for a throne is established through righteousness. Kings take pleasure in honest lips, they value a man who speaks the truth.

This past week in the United Kingdom, we have witnessed the most extraordinary scenes in our Houses of Parliament. Members of Parliament (MPs) have been rushing to pay back money to the Government that they should never have taken!

All MPs are rightfully entitled to claim for necessary expenses in doing their job, but for years there has been a culture of dishonesty in the seat of government. Many MPs, of all political parties, have been caught red-handed claiming money by way of expenses which had nothing whatsoever to do with the job they were doing. And the nation is outraged.

These people, who are responsible for putting laws into place which other people have to obey, have been systematically and dishonestly milking the system for their own benefit. But now they’ve been exposed (by a national newspaper), they are all desperately trying to pay the money back, thinking that if they pay it back they can get away with keeping their reputation. Never before have I seen such public hypocrisy.

I fear for our nation when such unrighteousness is at its core. As our scripture for today says, thrones (governments) are established through righteousness. The converse of this is that governments are destroyed by unrighteousness.

But before we all get on our very high horses and come down with a heavy hand of judgement upon these men and women, who have certainly acted without integrity (not all MPs are implicated, many have acted with total honesty and not claimed moneys falsely), let us examine our own hearts.

Is it not possible that there could be many things in our own lives (things we think about, say or do) that are ungodly? And I wonder how we would be behaving now if a ‘Kingdom Newspaper’ were to publicly expose these things for everyone else to know about? My guess is that we might be moving very quickly to try and put things right!

One day, at the end of time, everything will be exposed. So perhaps we should all learn from this sad episode in our parliamentary history and seek to put things right in our own lives now, and not wait for the public exposure of eternity. In that way our lives, our families, our churches, our cities and even our nations can be established in righteousness – and be strong.

Prayer: Lord, we are sorry for the deceptions operating in both our nations and our private lives. I ask that you will forgive me for the hidden things in my life, and help me to put things right now, simply because you tell us in your Word what is right and what is wrong, and not because we have been forced to act because someone else exposes the reality. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Living the Life – Book by Peter Horrobin

Proverbs 1: 10,15 & 16, NIV
My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them . . . do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths; for their feet rush into sin.

The word ‘entice’ means to tempt, or to lead astray. It carries with it all the connotations of exciting, but ungodly activities. Things which fascinate the carnal nature and which, if we are honest, all of us can be vulnerable to from time to time. Everything from greed to lust, and a whole lot of desires between these two extremes, can get stirred up when enticement is in the air!

In these very testing days, when many people are struggling to hold things together financially, and many are having to fight a sense of despair, enticement is especially dangerous. People look for some form of ‘comfort’ or ‘escape’ from the pressures they are enduring and are that much more vulnerable to temptations when they come – whether that temptation comes in the form of making money, having a wrong relationship or simply indulging in selfish and unproductive activity.

When times are tough, whether the season is totally personal to you or part of a national or international situation, the enemy will always try to take advantage of what’s going on, to entice you into something ungodly. He tries to stand in the place of God and be a source of comfort, not telling his victims that his sort of comfort will always prove to be false comfort.

When John penned the letters from Jesus to the seven Churches, recorded in Revelation 2 and 3, each one highlighted issues and problems that needed dealing with in the churches, but then ended with strong words of encouragement to endure and overcome. Jesus knew that, in testing times, the enemy would want to rob them of their inheritance. So, I urge you not to let anyone be used by the enemy to rob you of your inheritance in God – press on, win through and keep running the race of life!

Prayer: Help me, Lord, to recognise the enticements of the enemy when they come and then to endure and overcome whatever obstacles stand in the way of my destiny in God. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

God’s Amazing Grace – Teaching CD

Job 1:21, NIV
The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

The past few days have been difficult days. One of our long-serving and very much loved team members is no longer with us in an earthly sense, but he is still very much with us in a spiritual sense. He is now joined to Christ in eternity and we are joined to Christ in time. Jesus is the bridge between one side of the curtain and the other.

It seems especially difficult when someone is suddenly taken from us – it is such an unexpected shock for those who are left behind. And yet there was such a deep assurance that our brother’s life was totally bound up in God. And in those circumstances, in spite of all the difficult questions that immediately spring to mind, it is easy to say Amen to the words of Job. Words that were spoken by him when he got news of the death of members of his family. He recognised that life came from God in the first place (The Lord has given) and that life, therefore belongs to God, and the moment when we go to be with the Lord for eternity (the Lord has taken away) is, therefore, totally within his loving control. So we have no grounds for rejecting the God of love, when we lose a precious loved one, even though at that moment we cannot understand what He has done.

Of course there are the questions. Of course there is the pain and the grief and, even, a sense of anger at what has happened. But when our feelings are laid before the Lord at the foot of the cross, any sense of anger is dissipated by the overwhelming love of Jesus, who allowed His life to be taken, so that we may have ours back. And the Father who saw the death of his own Son, longs to put His arms of comfort around you. He totally understands.

And for our brother, he is now more alive than he has ever been. Many times he will have sung those words, “Now, my heart’s desire is to know You more.” Today, his prayer has been answered. The Lord has given him his heart’s desire. And I have no doubt that he is at peace that God knows best. So we can say with Job also, “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”

There will be many of you who understand first-hand the pain of loss of loved ones. As you put your trust afresh in the God who knows and understands, allow Him to also be the God of all comfort for you personally (2 Corinthians 1:3) and look to him for deep comfort, for inner healing and for his refreshment for life’s journey.

And for each of us, I pray that times like this will serve to remind us to both pray for the bereaved (Jesus said, “they will be comforted” Matthew 5:4) and of the importance of living every day, as unto the Lord, till either Jesus comes, or takes us also through that curtain which the world calls death, but which is simply a transition from life on earth to life in the glorious presence of our wonderful Redeemer.

Prayer: Thank you Jesus for the lives of all our brothers and sisters who have been called home before us. We thank you that for those who believe, there is an eternity of joy to look forward to. We truly can bless the Lord and praise His name. Amen.

Grief and Bereavement – Teaching CD

Ephesians 6:13, NIV
Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

I am fascinated by trees especially very tall ones and very old ones. Recently I visited Kew Gardens and traversed their new treetop walkway. It was worth climbing 118 steps to enter a canopy of unique trees and enjoy a spectacular view over Kew. It was, however, down in the tunnel afterwards, where you could see the roots, that I was most impressed. To understand how trees work we needed to go underground and see the strong supporting structure without which there would be no food and water for the tree to grow.

It made me think about bearing fruit for the kingdom. We need first to be rooted and grounded and firmly established in our personal faith in God so that when the storms come we shall not be shaken. In the storms of 1987 a group of seven oak trees in Kent was reduced to one oak tree, as six of these trees could not withstand the bashing from the weather.

Paul writes, ‘and after you have done everything, stand’ (Ephesians 6:13). We will only be able to stand in the coming storm if we have strong and healthy roots underpinning our faith and if we’re trusting in God alone. What do your roots look like? Are they being fed on the Word of God, nurtured by the love of God and watered by the one who said he who drinks of the water I shall give him shall never thirst again (John 4:13-14).

Our roots and foundations re very important. The verse ‘Unless the Lord builds the house the builders build in vain’ (Psalm 127:1) not only applies to churches and ministries, it also applies to the house of our life. The wise man built his house upon the rock so that when the floods came the house stood firm (Matthew 7:24-27).

Are our roots and foundations today in the rock, which is Jesus?

Prayer: Lord Jesus I know that to face the coming season in my life I need to be rooted and grounded in my faith and be trusting You. I need to be anchored strongly in You so that I can’t be shaken. Please help me to grow daily in Your love, Your word and Your power. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ellel 365 – Online Training School to be launched 1st July 2009

Psalm 33:12, NIV ; Psalm 144:15, NIV; Proverbs 14:34, NIV
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

Righteousness exalts a nation.

We are living in days when our nation, like many other nations of the world, is going through its toughest economic times in living memory. Commentators are having to stretch back into the dark days immediately after the second world war to see their like. With borrowings far in excess of what is prudent, and the government having had to resort to printing more money than is economically supportable, talk of a generation in debt and, even the spectre of national bankruptcy, are fuelling the fires of fear in the minds of the people.

It would be easy to make party political comments about all this, some of which may be accurate, but ultimately none of the political parties have shown any interest in looking at what the Word of God actually says about the situation – or asking if there is any connection between the state of the nation and the moral bankruptcy which is now the foundation of our society. In most of our western nations there has been a systematic removal from the rule of law, of the spiritual principles and the commandments of God which are the requirement for the success of a nation.

The psalmist summed it up so succinctly in our first two scriptures for today. Both a nation (as a whole) and the people will only know blessing when God is the Lord of that nation and the Lord of the people. During the second world war Churchill (Prime Minister) and the King (George VI) called the British nation to prayer (to the God of the Bible). As a result, at the time of Dunkirk the beleaguered British forces had a totally miraculous deliverance from the beaches of France. Later, commenting on this and other amazing victories, the Archbishop of Canterbury said: ‘Why has God preserved us? We may, and we must, believe that He who has preserved our land in a manner so marvellous, has a purpose for us to serve in the preparation for His perfect Kingdom.’

God preserved us then, because the leaders of our nation turned to God and made Him Lord. If we want to know how to get back on track, then the writer of the Proverbs gives us the answer when he says that “righteousness exalts a nation”. How I pray that God will raise up leaders in our nations who will not be afraid of the voices of those who would tread the downward path of moral compromise. People who would remember the lessons of history (for a nation that forgets its own lessons will only have to fight the same battles time and time again) and in humility confess the bankruptcy of man’s pride and choose to walk in the paths of righteousness. Only then will the nations we belong to be exalted and know God’s protection, security and blessing. Only then will we be able to re-discover the purposes of God for our nations.

Prayer: O God, our help in ages past, we cry out to you now to speak to the leaders of our nations, that there will be raised up in each nation those with a fearless voice to declare that it is only living in the righteousness of God that will exalt the nation. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Arise O Lord in the Darkness – Teaching By Jim Graham from recent Arise! Conference

Arise and shine for your light has come – Teaching by Peter Tsukahira from the recent Arise! Conference

John 4:13-14, NIV
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water i give him will become in a him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

We live in an old house. The oldest part of it was probably built about 400 years ago. Shortly after moving in we needed to do something about the paving at the front of the house. It was in a very bad condition and needed to be dug up. One of the workmen put in his spade at a certain point and it disappeared down a deep hole! Little by little they removed the ground at that point and suddenly, much to everyone’s surprise they realised that we had been walking over and parking our cars on top of a deep well! With a long piece of measuring string I discovered that there was over 50 feet of fresh water in the well!

Today we have an old-fashioned hand pump and can pump up as much water as we could possibly need whenever we want it. The construction of the inner walls of the well are such that it must have been there a very long time – it was probably the only source of water when the first house was built on the site.

Over the years I have watched the level of water in the well very carefully – no matter how dry the weather, the level never varies. I can pump hundreds of gallons out of it and within a very short space of time the well has been replenished. Beneath the ground there are hidden springs and it seems impossible to pump the well dry.

The spiritual water that Jesus was talking about to the woman in John 4 is very much like that. We may draw on the sustenance that comes from the water of life, and see how our lives can bless others in a dry and thirsty land, but the supply never runs out – and it is the very best quality water you can find anywhere – even better than the most exciting of sparkling waters you can find anywhere on the planet! When we know Jesus and are filled with His Spirit, the well of our lives is fed by a secret underground spring of this wonderful water, which will flow and flow and flow. No wonder Jesus was able to say to the woman at the well that you will never again be thirsty.

If right now you are feeling very dry, ask Jesus to show you anything that is blocking the flow of His Spirit into your life, deal with it and then invite the Holy Spirit to fill you afresh and for the rest of your days be a source of His ever-present supply of the water of life, that will always satisfy your spiritual thirst and never run dry.

Prayer: Thank you Jesus for showing us how to be constantly refreshed by the flow of your Spirit through our lives. Help me to be ever-conscious of others who are stretching out for “water” in a dry and thirsty land, be willing to share this wonderful truth with them and be a means of God’s wonderful grace to them all. Amen.

Living the Life – Book by Peter Horrobin

Arise and Build – Teaching By Peter Horrobin from recent Arise! Conference