31.01.07
Posted in God and the Family at 5:59 pm by dowboy
Read: 1 Chronicles 3
Kenny MacDonald, the former minister of Rosskeen, has a memorable phrase, borne and coined out of his own experience in seeing the Lord working through his ministry in the North. His phrase is ‘God Works in Families‘. He saw many parents coming to faith through the witness of their children; he saw many wives becoming Christians through the witness of their recently converted husbands, and vice versa. Our great covenant God, works in Families. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in The Psalms at 5:57 pm by dowboy
Do you have a passion for the Glory of God? Do you live for, do you breathe for, do you do all for the Glory of God? Does the honour of His Glory and His Great Name mean more to you than your own reputation? Do you believe that God will not allow the guilty to go unpunished? These are the kind of questions brought up by the penultimate type of Psalm we are looking at – Psalms of Imprecation – Psalms like 137:7-9 where, humanly speaking, we are left scratching our heads at the viciousness of Scripture. After all, how barbaric is it to talk of taking little children and dashing their heads against rocks? I mean, that is so sub-Christian isn’t it? That’s the kind of thing psychopaths do – not followers of the man who said, ‘Love your enemies. Pray for them who spitefully use you’. I mean, you would might expect the Psalmist, if he had any morsel of what passes as modern godliness within him to say, ‘Lord, have mercy on Babylon’, but rather than that, this vicious, vengeful, hate-filled songwriter pens these words of vitriol. This has led to many commentators, even evangelicals, calling these verses, and the other psalms which follow this trend, Psalms like 69, 83 and 109, ‘devilish’. They don’t believe they should be included in the Christian cannon of Scripture because they say that they are simply sub-Christian sentiments – relics of Judaism, not worthy of the disciples of Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in The Psalms at 5:55 pm by dowboy
The evening of the 13th April 1746 was grim, at least if your name was MacDonald or Cameron. It was the night before the battle of Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops were exhausted after retreating the 200 miles from Edinburgh. Encamped a few miles away in Nairn were the numerically superior troops of The Duke of Cumberland. As a last attempt to avert disaster, Prince Charlie ordered his troops to march the 12 miles, or so, to Nairn, and, in the dead of night, to ambush the Duke of Cumberland’s army whilst they slept. But, whilst they were still a few miles shy, the alarm was raised and the ambush was called off. At 4am in the morning, the even more exhausted Jacobites returned to Culloden, many of them collapsing where they stood and only waking up the next day to find a royalist sword through their bellies. The eve of the battle of Culloden set the tone for the next day – a next day which would herald the destruction of the clan system and the transformation of the Highland way of life forever. The eve of this battle, and all battles, are all important to the result of the subsequent encounter. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in James at 5:52 pm by dowboy
Why does God cause the righteous to suffer? That is the question which has haunted God’s people for thousands of years – right back to the days of Job and to Psalm 73. Is that the question which is haunting you tonight as you look at the sufferings of God’s people, or perhaps even the difficulties you are going through at the moment – why does God allow the righteous to suffer? Tonight, I want to look, from James 1:2-8, at, at least, part of the answer to that question. Read the rest of this entry »
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