Ancient Words Ever True

I wish to go out of my way this Christmas season to celebrate Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary became to us the Second Eve in a similar way that Jesus became the Second Adam ; for whereas through Eve Sin came into the world of humans, through Mary the Permanent Cure for Sin was delivered to us. Mary represents the rediscovery / restoration of the esteemed value of women; for whereas Eve brought shame to womanhood, Mary wiped off that shame. Apostle Paul would not even let women teach or assume authority. Why? Because it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. However, Mary represents the total removal of that stigma. "For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed; for he that is mighty hath magnified me and holy is his Name. " (Magnificat) Mary represents the importance of spiritual receptivity. In Mary, we discover what we really are: simple humans called upon by God to bear Christ in our bodies, through our lives, to our world. All who...

There are two prayers that many people here will have prayed. Anyone who’s lost someone in an untimely way, particularly perhaps a child, sibling or parent, a very close friend…. one is, ‘Make them better. Lord, make them better. Get them out of this. May they recover and be healed.’ The other is when that prayer has passed. A lot of people pray, ‘Lord, let me join them. Take me as well.’ The fact that we’re all sitting here today is because, for many of us, neither of those prayers were answered in the way we hoped. But time goes by and we begin to rebuild our lives. We never “get over it” — that’s such an atrocious expression — but we do begin to rebuild. You live with this gap, as Caroline and I did more than 30 years ago when our eldest daughter died, and you begin to rebuild. In those days Child Bereavement UK was not around, or if it was we didn’t know about it. Our daughter died five days after a car crash on the way back from France. We were moving back to the UK after s...

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. - Lord Kelvin If you do a simple reading of the book of First John*, you will see the phrase "By this we know..." (or something similar) appearing over and over again. What can we learn from this? GOD has not given us commands without putting measures by which we can measure how well we are doing in our obedience to Him. So, child of GOD, you will do well to take some assessment of yourself with regards to your walk with GOD based on the guideposts GOD has provided. If we are sincere with ourselves, then... We can actually know whether or not we know GOD. We can actually know how much we know GOD. We can actually know whether or not we love GOD. We can actually know how much we love GOD. We can actually know whether or not we are walking in error. We can actually know whether or not we dwell in Him. We can actually know whether or not He abides in us. We can actually know whether or not GOD ...