Worship that is acceptable to God, is to worship in spirit and in truth with the right heart.
Read morePSALM 49 — REVISED
No one can purchase God’s grace or salvation, or anyone else’s for that matter.
Read morePSALM 48 — REVISED
Praise God, that you can live each day in God’s presence.
Read morePSALM 47 — REVISED
He is the great King, whose dominion extends over the entire earth.
Read morePSALM 46 — REVISED
The true source of security is in the reality of God’s presence.
Read morePSALM 46 — REVISED
n situations where there is no earthly hope, God is your hope and help.
Read moreA CHRISTMAS PRAYER
O Source of all good,
What shall I render to you for the gift of gifts,
your own dear Son?
Herein is wonder of wonders:
he came below to raise me above,
was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to him
he draws near on wings of grace,
o raise me to himself.
Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart,
he united them in indissoluble unity,
the uncreate and the created.
Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me!
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherd,
and enlarge my mind!
Let me hear good tidings of great joy,
and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father!
Place me with ox, donkey, camel, goat,
to look with them upon my Redeemer's face,
and in him account myself delivered from sin!
Let me with Simeon clasp the newborn child to my heart,
embrace him with undying faith,
exulting that he is mine and I am his!
In him you have given me so much that heaven can give no more.
—from Valley of Vision
PSALM 45 — REVISED
A marriage that honours Christ will cause the world to notice and Christians to praise God.
Read moreA COLD HEART IS A HEART ON THE BRINK OF TEMPTATION
May it never be that God’s Word simply becomes aesthetically pleasing to our ears without being spiritually convicting to our hearts.
Read moreOUR LONG-AWAITED KING
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh,
“When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch;
And He will reign as king and prosper
And do justice and righteousness in the land.
— Jeremiah 23:5
How should God’s people respond to the wickedness of their leaders? Should they collapse in a heap owing to dejection and despair because “nothing seems to change”? Should they follow suit in glee, with an attitude of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”? Or should they try and follow “a middle path” where attempts at righteous living mingle with convenient compromise because “nobody’s perfect”?
As we go through our study of 1 & 2 Kings, we come face to face with a society, not unlike ours, where leadership has all but abandoned its moral moorings. Objective truth has been co-opted by subjective experience and tradition (1 Ki 22:6). What once were vices are now celebrated as virtues; what once were virtues are regarded as vices (Isa 5:20).As a result, evildoers are feted (Mal 3:15) and justice is perverted (Hab 1:4).
Nevertheless, in the midst of this gloom, God’s Word brings hope. This is not a grassroots revolution caused by men that will change things from the bottom up. Instead, this is a top down effect caused by God’s sovereign intervention despite what men may think or do. He promises to send His Anointed One who will reinstate righteousness and peace so that justice will reign.
We can be sure that this will happen, because the Anointed One, Jesus Christ, has indeed come. This incarnation of God taking on human flesh is what we will celebrate at Christmas. Nevertheless, as we remember His first advent as the suffering Servant, let us look forward to His return as the King of kings to fully realise the prophecies about Him. May this hope of a glorious future motivate us to faithful perseverance in the present.
— Contributed by Peter Rufus