No Guts No Glory

No worthwhile achievement comes without effort, without sacrifice or without courage. People and forces will try to stop you from achieving your goal. You are at war.

What is the enemy? It can be summarized as “The Flesh” but contains many different elements.

v Your heredity. The genes you have inherited from your parents have shaped a lot of your characteristics. You might be tempted to say, “I am lazy, that’s just how I was born” or “I am not a tidy person. A leopard can’t change his spots.” You might even blame your parents – “I’ve got my Dad’s bad temper”

v Your past. These are the experiences and decisions in the past that have shaped what you now are. Your early circumstances, your level in society, the advantages and disadvantages you may have had. It includes your training, the example set by your parents, their mistakes, your mistakes. You are a product of the decisions you have made. “I had a bad start in life. My Dad left us when I was little and my Mom turned to alcohol. What chance do I have?”

v Your human nature which is more commonly called “the Flesh” in the Bible. You will recognize this human nature by the following characteristics. It would rather stay in bed than get up early and pray. It would rather chuck the paper on the floor than pick it up and put it in the dustbin. It would rather be brought coffee in bed than make coffee for somebody else. It would rather eat chocolate than apply the discipline of dieting. It would rather watch TV than study. It hates being told what to do, it resists discipline and does what it feels like.

Fortunately you do have various weapons at your disposal.

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v Devine help. You are made in God’s image and you do not even imagine the capabilities He has built into you. If you go through the Bible you will come across many promises – “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13), “Nothing will be impossible for you “ (Math 17:20), if you have just a little faith, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26). Seek God and seek his help.

v Help from others. There are so many experts, trainers, mentors, coaches, nobody needs to struggle on his own to achieve a worthwhile goal. If you are a student struggling to make the grade there are student counselors, if you are battling to overcome an alcohol addiction there is Alcoholics Anonymous. If you want to train for the Olympics you need a coach with knowledge, skill and inspiration.

v Discipline. You need a plan or a training schedule and you need to stick to it. If you break the task into bite-sized bits it will not seem to daunting. Do you want to pass your exams at the end of the year? Will 2 hours of study a day do it? If not, allocate more. If you have not been studying up till now and are not in the habit (and your flesh is sticking its feet in and resisting all the way) try one hour a day for the first week, then 2 hours, then 3 hours until you get used to it. It will become easier. If you are going on a diet, make a decision to stick to it for today only. Then tomorrow make a new decision. If you are training for a marathon, start with a short distance than increase every day. Your discipline muscles might be very flabby and after a short time you might want to just give up. That’s where the guts comes in. Hang in there.

v Your will. This is the only thing that can get you doing the necessary hard work. How strong is your will? If your discipline muscles are flabby, you need to exercise them, to build them up. The same with your will. Force yourself to do certain things each day to strengthen your will. It should be something you don’t enjoy but which is good for you or the situation. It can be something as simple as tidying your workspace if you are an untidy person. Determine to organize one area a day and on subsequent days keep that one area ordered and order another. If you are doing weight lifting or exercise, force yourself to do another couple after you are exhausted. If you are a Christian and want to get closer to God, set the alarm clock for half an hour earlier then put one foot out of bed as soon as it rings.

Realize that there will be setbacks. This is no easy task and nobody said it was going to be easy. Perseverance requires courage. It requires guts. Are you up to it? Remember. No Guts no Glory.

So, who is winning the war at the moment? Who is in control here? Your will or your Flesh? Who will be winning the war tomorrow?

Make a Smilebox photobook

Panda's on the move

From: Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?

Date: 2008/07/20 09:07:00 AM

To: jenny.young@wol.co.za

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What's mine is mine

At last I’ve got my car back. That is to say, it’s not quite my car. Well, to be quite honest, it’s not my car. I did not pay for it, it is not registered in my name and I didn’t earn it.

The car, named by me as “Flaming Arrow” or “Flame” for short was my husband’s company car. I got to drive it. So I got to regard it as my own. When my husband retired, we had planned to buy the car from the company. At the beginning of the month my husband retired. Since the car was not ours, we had to give it back until the pension money came through and we could pay for it.

I was so annoyed with the company. How could they be so mean! Did they realize how much inconvenience I was going through because they insisted that the car sat in their garage and nobody drove it?

Of course, it is still not my car. The money has come through and Brian has paid for it and at last I am allowed to drive it again. But it will not be registered in my name. It will never be mine.

How many things that are not ours do we regard as ours? I talk about the school where I work as “my school”. I have absolutely no ownership in it. What about “my country?”

They say possession is nine tenths of the law. What is it about possession that grabs us?

I talk about “my life.” It is not really mine. I did not make it, buy it or earn it although it may be registered in my name. It is a gift of God. My husband and my children are also gifts. So are all my talents and accomplishments. God can take them back at any time and no doubt I will then also accuse Him of being mean. I think this was the mistake of the tenants in the parable of the tenants. (Math 12). They thought the vineyard belonged to them and they could do what they liked with it, reap the profits, and when the owner sent servants to collect some of its fruits, they rebelled violently. They went to great lengths to hold on to what was never really theirs, greedily depriving the owner of what was due to him. They did not even respect the son, but did away with him so they could get on with their own selfish lives.

“Lord, please forgive me for regarding as mine what is rightfully yours and please help me to give you your due.”

The Body

Acceptance

Service at Randmeth Sunday 16 July 7pm

Different generations of people tend to like different kinds of music.

It would also be true to say that different cultures or races or nationalities like different types of music and that is not the only thing that is different about them. Let’s face it, we are all different. I am a different generation to my daughter. I think blouses and tops should be tucked into skirts and pants, she thinks they should hang out. The church is made up of different kinds of people.

Paul likens the Church to the Body of Christ. He says,

Now anybody who has ever done any Biology will know that our body is made up of cells. Perhaps you’ve had to learn to draw a diagram of a typical animal cell and it looks like this… …

Every cell in your body has the same DNA, bundled into 23 pairs of Chromosomes.

That is what makes you, you and me, me.

Now every part of Christ’s body has His Holy Spirit. If we have asked Jesus to come into our lives and take over ownership, we have the Holy Spirit living in us. That is our spiritual DNA.

But guess what? If we look carefully at the cells of our body, we don’t even see one that resembles the typical animal cell we just talked about.

Let’s look at muscle cells.

Kind of long and skinny, aren’t they. These cells are very active and use a lot of energy. They get things done. There are people in the church like this and let’s face it, the church would not function without them. They are always busy – feeding the hungry, raising money for the poor, educating the illiterate. If Martha was a body cell, she would probably have been a muscle cell. Other cells might say they are not spiritual enough. But even muscle cells need to be fed. They need a time to rest as well as a time to work. Otherwise the body would not function properly.

Then we have bone.

Bone gives structure and order to the body. Christians who have studied the bible extensively and have done a lot of reading are a bit like bone cells. They usually have an accumulated life experience as well and have walked with the Lord a long time. They are wise. They know the rules and stick by the rule book.

Other cells might say they are too rigid and set in their ways. The biggest danger to bone cells is if they lose their connection to the Lord. If routine and discipline and order strangle out the voice of the Spirit and they just keep going in the same path without the life of Christ, the bones might get brittle and break too easily.

Still with bone, we have bone marrow. This is where new blood cells are made.

These people are the evangelists. They are so excited when people come to the Lord.

They are essential for the life and the ongoing existence of the body. Billy Graham might be an example of a bone marrow Christian. It is the job of all cells to reproduce- to make new cells to replace old ones but bone marrow does it as its primary function. Other cells might say they are not practical. They are so busy thinking about people’s souls, they forget their bodies, their need for support and sometimes the new converts are left to flounder on their own. The danger for bone marrow Christians is when they start judging success by the world’s standards. How many people came to the rail or signed commitment forms. They forget whose work it is. Only God can make a person a Christian.

Then we have the pray-ers, the red blood cells,

supplying oxygen and life for every cell in the body,

the nerve cells,

the communication network ,

macrophages,

who guard the body from infection and distortion,

and my favourite picture, the cells in the eye.

These are rods and cones, the cells that make up the retina of the eye. They have different functions. The rods see light and dark, the cones see more detail. These are the people who see the vision. But unless they communicate with the nervous system, the vision is lost. Some cells might say they don’t do anything so they are useless.

There are many more. I could spend 100 pages showing you pictures of body cells but this is a sermon, not Biology class.

The point is, just as there is no typical animal cell, there is no typical Christian. We are all different and that is not a mistake, God did it on purpose. We are all unique and God made us with a purpose, with a plan in mind.

Of course we think that all Christians should be exactly like us, should think like us, should worship like us.

Because we are all different, God deals with us differently. Nobody can say to another Christian, because your experience is not my experience, you are not a Christian.

Paul says, “For we are all baptised by one Spirit into one body- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” We can make this more relevant to our situation by saying “We are all baptised by one Spirit into one Body, whether Youth or Old Fogy, Black or White, Educated or Uneducated- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

He goes on to say, imagine of one part of the body felt inferior to the rest of the body.

Imagine if a bone cell were to say, because I am not a muscle cell, I am useless, or if a nerve cell were to say, because I am not a rod or a cone, I am not part of the body. We can all see that that is ridiculous. We would hate any such thing going on in our body.

And Christ hates such things going on in His body.

Jesus prays for His disciples in John 17:20-21. “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

In 2000 years, Jesus’ prayer has not been answered. His disciples are not one. Being one, does not mean being the same. God made us individual and unique, he does not want “typical Christian clones.” But what he does want, is unity. He does not want Christians refusing to accept each other, criticising each other because of their God made differences.

Paul says in verse 18, “God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be.”

God has put us where we are. He has put us with the people He has ordained. It is not for a toe cell to decide – I don’t want to be part of the foot – I am surrounded by calloused cells. I want to be part of the hand. That is where the action is. I’ll just move.

One part of the body, can’t say to another, “I don’t need you.” When that happens in our body and one part starts attacking another, it is an autoimmune disease and we die from it.

Vs 24 “ But God has combined the members of the body and given greater honour to those that lacked it, so there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it, if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.”

When we first look at a body what hits us is skin. The skin is the largest organ of the body and statisticians would probably find out that there are more skin cells in the body than any other kind. So it would be easy for, say the adrenal gland to think I am not a skin cell, therefore I don’t fit in. Those who think they don’t fit in are all the more important because they have their uniqueness to offer. “God has given greater honour to those who lacked it”

What can we do practically, to accept other people, particularly those in Christ’s body?

First of all, Jesus accepted everyone. Here he was, the sinless son of God, and they brought Him a woman caught in adultery. As a good Jewish boy he knew very well that adultery was a sin forbidden in the law of Moses. Notice he did not condone her sin. He said, I do not condemn you, go and sin no more. He accepted her. He treated her with respect.

The Samaritan woman, a hated foreigner, he treated as a person of worth. South Africa’s equivalent today would probably be a Nigerian – after all many people think they are all criminals. We make jokes about them. But Jesus never treated anyone other than with respect and acceptance.

Paul says in Phil 2:5 “let this attitude be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.”

Let us treat others with the attitude of Jesus.

That includes the teacher at school who has it in for you, it includes the inefficient black woman at work who has been promoted over you because of affirmative action, It includes the loud, noisy neighbours who’s teenage son has just bought an ear splitting new car sound system.

As our section of the body, the Randmeth Church, I would suggest the following four steps.

1. Find out what your gift is, your purpose and use it to God’s glory and the building up of our church. Everybody has something to offer. But remember – Christ is the head. It is His Body and He is in control.

1. Don’t be oversensitive. I’m sorry to be the one who has to break it to you, but the world does not revolve around you. People are probably not talking about you when you come to a little group in discussion, they have much more important things to talk about, themselves for instance. If your name does not appear in the church notices, it is not because the office staff are out to get you.

If you are not invited to present your team’s report at some boring meeting, it is not because your team is unimportant.

Oversensitivity is a subtle form of selfishness. It is relating everything in the world to you and how it affects you. It is just as much a sin as the more overt form of selfishness.

Because sin has tarnished the image of God in all of us, you will sometimes get negative comments. Other people aren’t perfect either you know but just because one person in the church says you can’t buy two cakes at the cake sale does not mean that the whole church rejects you and you should now find another church. Just because one person criticises the work you have done for the Lord, does not mean that nobody values your work and you will never do anything for the Lord again. In fact it would be much safer if you just did everything for the Lord and not for people anyway. Christ is the head of the Church. He is the one in control. We should never confuse God’s work with our work. We are working for Christ according to His instructions, not what seems good to us.

1. Put on rose coloured spectacles. I have said we are all imperfect and a mixture of good and not so good. It is easy to see the not so good. Let us make an effort to see the good in people, in their work and filter out the not so good.

Can we see God’s image in other people? It is there, you know. One of the Holiday club leaders told us last week that although they had gone to teach children, in some cases they had learned from Children. That is seeing God’s image in other people.

Don’t look at the differences that irritate you. Look at the things we have in common. We are all working for the good of one body.

1. Let your words build up, not break down. Tomorrow, somebody will probably phone the church office to complain about tonight’s service. Perhaps they didn’t come for a Biology lesson, but an uplifting sermon. Perhaps they didn’t like the music. Let’s put on our rose coloured spectacles and filter out what we didn’t like and look for perhaps just one thing that we did like.

Compliment rather than criticising and complaining. When you feel a negative comment coming, zip your lip. Think hard to find a positive comment and then hand it to someone as a gift from God.

You know yourself how a simple thank you or a well done grows your spirit.

Shall we withhold life and growth to our fellow body cells?

And when you are given a compliment, sniff at it and then give it to the Lord. Any beauty you have is from Him. Any talent you have is from Him. Anything you have achieved is only because He has enabled you. Give Him the glory.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Believing Lies

From a sermon I gave in an old age home in 2006.

This is a riddle by Greg Mc Kinnon.

You are on the road of life and you come to a fork in the road. One road leads to heaven and the other to hell. There are two guides standing at the fork in the road and you can ask only one question of either of them. One of them is an absolute liar and will not tell you the truth. The other is one hundred percent honest and can only tell you the truth.

Which one, and only one, question can you ask that will let you know without a doubt that you are on the right road? Even after asking this question you will not know if the guide told you the truth or not, but you will know that you have chosen the right road.

The answer: Since you can only ask one question and you don’t know which guide will tell you the truth, you can ask either guide this question. “If I were to ask the other guide which is the right road, what would he tell me?” You then take the opposite road.

Here is why: If it was the liar you questioned, he will lie about the true answer the other guide would give, so you would want to take the opposite road from the one he told you. If, on the other hand it was the honest guide you questioned, he will truthfully tell you the lie that the other guide would have told you. So you know the opposite road is the answer. So this one question will produce a wrong answer no matter which guide you ask and you can take the opposite road.

Today I want to talk about believing lies.

Twice I have received counselling for depression, once from a Psychologist, and once from a Christian Counsellor. Both of them told me the same thing in different words.

I am made in the image of God. The devil has used the world and circumstances to make me believe lies about myself and obscure that image. It occurred to me that it is very likely that there are many others who have also believed lies of the devil and as a result are living in depression. I just want to add that there are more than one kind of depression. Sometimes when we have experienced a trauma or loss we are in a state of depression, like a bottle of oil and water all shaken up. This is a perfectly natural state of affairs and I think we would be most concerned if we did not react like this. It is wise under these circumstances to go for trauma counselling or bereavement counselling. Sometimes there is a chemical imbalance in our bodies and medication is called for – this is just as natural as insulin for a diabetic – there is some malfunction in our endocrine system, and medical science is advanced enough to be able to supplement the deficit.

So today I am just going to talk about the image of God.

The bible says that we are made in the image of God.

Isaiah 44:2 says :”I am your creator. You were in my care even before you were born.” Albert Einstein said, “ God doesn’t play dice.”

In his book, “The Purpose driven life,” Rick Warren says,

“You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of Nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.

Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor co incidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you. The bible says, “ The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me.”

This is exactly what psalm 139 vs 13-18 says. From “The Message”

“O yes, you shaped me, first inside then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High god – you’re breathtaking!

Body and soul I am marvellously made! I worship in adoration – what a creation!

You know me inside and out. You know every bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit; how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.”

This tells us, before we were even conceived, God planned us. Think about it. I think we all know the biology of fertilization. Only one egg cell is produced by the mother. Millions of sperm are produced by the male, but only one, the fastest, the strongest, in fact, the winner, became each of us. So in that sense, we were winners even before we were born. And God watched, from conception to birth as His plan unfolded. Think of a new born baby. Think of yourself as a new born baby. As it is born, God takes it onto his lap and loves it. He doesn’t love it for anything it has done. It has not yet done anything. He loves it because it is His. Made in his image. And nothing we can subsequently do can make God love us more. Or less.

We are made in our Father’s image. We glorify God. Those of you who have children might remember that love that came over you the first time you saw your baby. That is only a faint shadow compared to the love God feels for each one of his children. So be assured. God loves us, very, very much. I am my Daddy’s little girl and the apple of his eye. And so are you.

But the devil will do anything to discredit God and distort his image.

Let’s look at his modus operandi.

First he casts doubt on God’s character and our relationship with him. In the garden of Eden he says to Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” What is his implication? Wow God is so mean. He makes this beautiful garden and won’t even let you eat anything in it. He doesn’t really love you, my dear,does he?

In fact, that was not what God said. God gave them permission to eat from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When he talks to Jesus in the wilderness, the first thing he says to him is “If you are the son of God…” He is trying to cast doubt on Jesus’ very identity, his love relationship with God. He is saying, in fact, prove you are the son of God. Jesus does not need to prove anything to the devil, nor do we.

The aim of the devil is to cause a rift between us and God. He does this by putting doubt in our minds about God’s love for us and our relationship with him, but also about the word of God. In the Garden of Eden he misquotes God’s word, but keeps close enough to the truth to make it sound plausible. In the wilderness he actually quotes scripture but uses it out of context. He uses verses from Psalm 91: “ He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

Jesus wisely counter quotes and says “It is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The devil hasn’t changed his tactics. His main aim is to cause a rift between us and God and to make us believe lies. Quite often he uses people and circumstances to make us believe lies.

The fact is: We are made in God’s image and God loves us.

The devil gets the world to tell us things like,

“You are not good enough. You have never been good enough”

There are variation on this theme: You are not a good wife, or you are too old to be any use to anybody, or you are not interesting , You have to earn your value.

Another line of attack is to attack our relationship with God. It starts similar to the opening attack on Jesus, “ If you are the son of God,” In our case it usually starts, “If you were a real Christian….”

Have you ever heard any of these lies.

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t be worried about going in for this operation or you wouldn’t be worried when your husband goes in for a heart by pass.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t be suffering from depression.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t have lost your temper.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t have evil thoughts like that.”

All of these are lies. Being a Christian is a relationship. Once we have invited Christ into our lives, we become children of God. Our actions do not change that. Certainly we can put up a barrier by sinning against God, by turning our back on Him, but in the same way that a child is still your child even if he gets into trouble and makes wrong choices, or sulks and won’t talk to you, we are still children of God. Our humanity, that God created, does not affect that relationship. Of course we will be afraid if we face danger and possible death. Of course we will feel sad if something has happened to upset us.

Besides using people and the world to tell us lies, like the teacher who says “You will never be any good” and the friend who says, “I don’t want to be your friend, you have no personality,” the devil also uses circumstances and trauma. If you had an unhappy childhood, he will whisper, “it’s all your own fault, you deserved it.”

After a major setback or trauma like a hijacking, he will say, “See, I told you God doesn’t love you. He would never have let this happen to you if he really loved you.”

He might even quote scripture like he did to Jesus for instance, God made a number of promises to the Israelite about their 40 years in the wilderness. Their shoes and clothes would not wear out, none of them would miscarry, the diseases of Egypt would not affect them. The devil might use some of these texts and say, “see God does not keep his promises. Your daughter had a miscarriage. God does not love you. He can’t be trusted.”

God never promised a trouble fee life. He never promised to protect us from problems and disasters. In fact Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but behold, I have overcome the world.

So how can we defend ourselves.? Like Jesus we need to know the word of God to be able to see God’s word as a whole and not just isolated texts here and there.

We need to focus on the facts revealed by God.

Fact 1. We are made in the image of God.

Fact 2. God loves us very very much, more than any human love that we have ever known or ever heard of.

Fact 3. God has a plan for our lives and it was planned before we were born. God has a plan for our whole lives and not just two thirds of our lives.

Fact 4. God has made it possible for us to be forgiven, no matter what.

Fact 5. God has prepared a mansion in heaven for us where we can live with him forever.

These are the facts. Are you going to believe the facts of God, or the lies of the devil?

When negative thoughts come into your head, Ask yourself, is this of God or is this a lie of the devil?

I want to tell you a story about believing a lie also by Greg mc Kinnon.

There in the middle of the chickens was an eagle. It was a full grown, king of all birds eagle! But he was scratching in the dirt looking for worms, insects and seeds. He was clucking and cackling and flapping his wings as he flew just a few feet at a time.

This eagle had a six foot wing span that would allow him to fly above the clouds, but instead he was just fluttering around on the ground. His keen eyesight and sharp talons were supposed to make him a threat to every small bird and mammal anywhere near him. Yet the only thing he was a threat to was some unsuspecting worm he might happen to unearth.

Why in the world was this eagle acting like a chicken? Here is the story: An Indian brave found the eagle egg and he didn’t know what to do with it, so he put it in the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched and grew up with the other chicks. He never saw another eagle – only chickens. All his life he thought he was a prairie chicken. He mimicked their every move.

One day when the eagle was growing old, he looked up into the sky and saw an eagle soaring on the wind far above him. “What a beautiful bird!” the eagle said to the chicken next to him. “What is it?”

“That’s an eagle – the king of all birds,” the chicken clucked, “but don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.”

Don't believe lies - they might stop you from achieving your full potential.