PUTTING COLOUR INTO YOUR BIBLE STUDY

A way to stimulate and organise your thoughts.

Using Ephesians 1:15-23

“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints… his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

White

This relates to pure facts of a situation. It separates in our mind what is fact and what is interpretation or opinion.

In reflecting on this passage, ask yourself what does this passage actually say or mean?

Red

Relates to feeling, emotion and intuitions.

Reflect on how you feel about what this passage says to you personally, about your life generally, about your ministry generally, your prayer life and ministry.

Black

This involves the negative aspects of the situation or issue, the barriers to its outworking. It involves playing ‘devil’s advocate”.

Reflect on what you see as the barriers in your life to fully experiencing all that Paul was praying for his readers.

Yellow

Yellow symbolises sunshine, brightness and optimism. This reflects on the positive and constructive and covers the range from the logical and practical on one end, to dreams, visions and hopes at the other end of the spectrum.

Reflect on what your life would look like if this prayer was being fulfilled to a much larger extent in your life and perhaps your family, and in those to whom you minister.

Green

Is fertile and creative. This represents creative thinking, the search for alternatives, going beyond the known, the obvious and the satisfactory. It also involves the question of what you are personally going to do with the info you have learned.

Reflect on what practical steps you are going to take to make what Paul prayed for a growing reality in your personal life and ministry.

Blue

Is control. It organises the thinking itself. It involves thinking about the thinking process needed to explore the subject or issue. It is like the conductor of an orchestra. The blue hat is responsible for summaries, overviews and conclusions.

Summarise what you have learned from this passage and write all the things that you are going to do as a result of your reflection.                   

THE HOSPITAL BY THE RIVER by Dr Catherine Hamlyn

[Macmillan 2001]



If you haven't already, you must read this book. I  rarely say “must”, but really, you must. This book drew me to tears and cast me on my knees beside my bed. I can’t remember ever reacting to a book (other than the Bible) like that before. Here are some quotes:



 [About Ethiopian Fistula Victims] By now the mother may have been in labour for five or six days, but her misery is only beginning. The pressure of the baby has cut off the blood supply to her bladder, and the tissue has died (as well as the baby). The poor woman is left with a hole, or fistula, between the bladder and vagina. In some cases there is also a hole in the rectum. The contents of bladder and bowel leak continuously through the vagina. Because of her offensiveness, she is usually deserted by her husband and ostracised by the village. She is condemned to a life of loneliness and shame.

………………………….

I am sometimes asked how I have come to spend the greater part of my life in Ethiopia. The answer is simple. I believe that Reg and I were guided here by God. It is not inconceivable that the call was uttered long ago, before either of us were born. There is a verse in the Psalms which says, ‘For you have heard my vows, O God; you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.’ Both Reg’s family and mine have a tradition of missionary service dating back at least to the nineteenth century. It is quite possible that one or another of our ancestors might have prayed for their work to continue with future generations.

………………………..

(My father) Theo proposed when Mother was 23; the pair were on a picnic together. She did not doubt that she was in love but there were complications. Inspired by her mother and her aunt, Florence, she had long had the idea of doing something great for God. If she agreed to marry it would mean the end of those ambitions. She told my father that she would have to go away and pray for guidance. Theo patiently sat on a stump while Mother prayed. A verse from Jeremiah came to her mind, ‘Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not.’ When she returned she told him she would be his wife.

…………………………

Another missionary friend, Dr Don McClure, was in his sixties when we met him. Later, when he was older, Reg asked him once what was the secret of his long and vigorous life. He told this story. ‘When we got married, my wife and I were very happy. As we came out of the church we said, “Let’s stay like this forever. We’re sure to have some tiffs, so if we ever feel angry with each other I’ll go out into the garden and dig and you go into the kitchen and start cooking.”

‘That’s the secret,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in the open air ever since!’

Sarah Edwards - A Preacher's Wife

“For the first fourteen years of the marriage of Sarah and Jonathan Edwards, she seemed to the outside world to be the sunny and stable member of the team. While Edwards pampered his headaches and his finicky colon, she would scarcely pause when she shucked off a baby. Hopkins reports of her:

She was unmindful of any pain or affliction … As he was of a weakly, infirm constitution … she was a tender nurse to him, cheerfully attending upon him at all times, and in all things ministering to his comfort.

The casual observer saw the difficult husband, the endlessly giving wife. Actually, more than anyone on the outside guessed, she leaned on him. Though she carried all the practical details of managing the house, Sarah depended on Edwards for her own spiritual replenishment. She fed on his leadership of family prayers and on the quiet time she and Edwards spent together after the children were in bed. When Edwards was away, she had to carry on all the complex administration of a large household without nourishment of her own inner self, without someone she could allow to share her fears and failings. She could take anything but his absences.

Edwards knew this and he worried about the mounting calls on him to travel. On January 19^th Sarah described herself,

"I felt very uneasy and unhappy … I thought I very much needed help from God …"

She was crushed when, the next morning, Edwards mildly pointed out to her that she might have been tactless in a conversation she had the previous day with “Mr Williams of Hadley”. When Edwards suggested that she might have handled Williams more adroitly, she crumbled.

"I found that it seemed to bereave me of the quietness and calm of my mind, in any respect not to have the good opinion of my husband. This I much disliked in myself."

She goes on to explain:

"The peace and calm of my mind … seemed sensibly above the reach of disturbance from anything but these two: 

1^st my own good name and fair reputation among men, and especially the esteem and just treatment of the people of this town; 

2ndly And more especially, the esteem and love and kind treatment of my husband.

So Edwards, in his casual remark about her handling of the difficult Mr Williams, punctured Sarah’s two most vulnerable points – her anxiety about offending people and her need to be approved by her husband.

It is curious that a minister’s wife feels she has to be popular in a parish. If a man does his work as well as he is able, his own conscience should provide a measure of his success. Yet almost all ministers’ wives appear to need assurance that they, too, are accepted warmly by the people. This illogical human need was now nibbling at Sarah Edwards.

A young man named Buell had come to fill the pulpit while Edwards was absent. Sarah may have been afraid that the people might like Mr Buell better than they liked her husband.

Often an older minister has plugged along and then had an attractive assistant whiz in, full of youthful energy and ambition. The older man may rejoice that his young associate can reach certain people who had not been touched before, but only a rare minister is not threatened. After the muted Edwards, the people of the congregation enjoyed the masculine vitality of young Buell. Edwards, on his part, had no competitiveness in his makeup. He was simply delighted by anyone of ability who could add to the work of the Kingdom. However, Edwards had always been impervious to social nuances. Sarah, whose genius was her ability to tune in on the feelings of other people, was on the other hand exceptionally vulnerable to hostility. The threat of Buell almost undid her before she was freed of jealousy forever.

The older clergy thought Buell needed some tempering before he could qualify for ordination, so they sent him to study under Edwards. He promptly captivated the congregation, and Sarah was confronted by the need to take into her household a guest who was more popular that her husband was.

For a week while Edwards was absent, Sarah went through some extraordinary experiences described in her words as ‘joy’, ‘thankfulness’, ‘excited’, ‘converse very earnestly’, ‘the intenseness of my feelings took away my bodily strength’. She fainted several times and had to be put to bed.

When Edwards returned, he did an amazing thing. His ability to forecast future developments was both his genius and his burden.  Long before anyone thought of psychotherapy, he anticipated it. He had Sarah sit down and tell him everything she could remember about the weeks just past. Using the shorthand system he had invented, he took down her words in full. By promptly reliving the strange weeks she had just spent, Sarah seems to have discharged the pressures of fourteen taut years. From then on, she sailed through strains that would have sent another woman into bitter seclusion or into whining invalidism with migraines or sinus.

So she went back to making jams and hemming linens, but after this time her work appears to have been done without resentment.

For the rest of their life together, Edwards was to marvel at his wife’s good disposition. As he put it, she lived with a "Daily sensible doing and suffering everything for God … eating for God and working for God and sleeping for God, and bearing pain and trouble for God, and doing all as the service of love, and so doing it with a continual, uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace and joy."

He was also struck by her "Continual rejoicing in all the work of God’s hands, the works of nature, and God’s daily works of providence. And her wonderful access to God by prayer."

Sarah picked up life again, and went on as before, but in a new dimension of joy. Her own words may explain it. She said it left her with “the riches of full assurance.” She recalled how, midway in that peculiar week, she woke and "was led to reflect on God’s mercy to me in giving me, for many years, a willingness to die, and after that … in making me willing to live."

The neurotic martyr is ready to die. The greater valour is to be willing to live. Her husband explained:

"Now if such things are enthusiasm and the offspring of a distempered brain; let my brain be possessed evermore of this happy distemper! If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may all be seized with this glorious distraction."

And Sarah said to him, "I could sit and sing this life away.”

[Elizabeth D Dodds, Marriage To A Difficult Man P 105]

THE GREAT PHYSICIAN

She only touched the hem of His garment

As to His side she stole,

Amid the crowd that gathered around Him,

And straightway she was whole.

He turned with "Daughter, be of good comfort,

Your faith has made you whole!"

And peace that passes all understanding,

With gladness filled her soul.

- G.F. Root

The Great Physician now is here,

The sympathizing Jesus;

He comes the wounded heart to cheer,

O hear the voice of Jesus.

- J.H. Stockton

What is the reason for enforcing the fifth commandment -

"Honour your father and your mother..."?

The reason for enforcing the fifth commandment,

in these words, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you,

is an express promise of long life and prosperity,

to all who keep this commandment,

as far as it serves God's glory and their own good.

- Larger Catechism

It is not how many years we live,

but what we do with them.

- Evangeline Booth

AMEN!

gladness of a great assent –“so be it!”

Sometimes it should be shouted with a heart full of joy – Amen; so be it!

Sometimes it should be deliberately whispered – Amen; so be it. He calls: I follow – even unto death.

“True prayer, when it is that kind which asks, is for courage to endure, never for permission to survive.” That is to say Amen from a full heart.

“It is finished!” was our Lord’s Amen to the Father’s will. He who is the Amen thus said His Amen  – Finished! Fulfilled!

PK HUMOUR

Proof that girls are evil:

First we state that girls require time and money.

Girls = Time x Money

And as we know 'time is money.'

Time = Money

Therefore:

Girls = Money x Money = (Money) ²

And because 'money is the root of all evil':

Money = ÖEVIL

Therefore:

Girls = (ÖEVIL)²

And we are forced to conclude that:

Girls = Evil

FOR THE NEW YEAR - Facing a Task Unfinished

Frank Houghton penned this hymn to be sung to the tune AURELIA. (The Church's One foundation) He was the General Secretary of the China Inland Mission  during WW2, and Bishop of East Szechwan.  He wrote it as part of a campaign to recruit 200 new workers to China in 2 years.

Bishop Houghton plays a significant part throughout the story I have written of my missionary parents, 'My China Mystery', to be released in April 2012. http://mychinamystery.blogspot.com/

Facing a Task Unfinished

Facing a task unfinished
That drives us to our knees
A need that, undiminished
Rebukes our slothful ease
We, who rejoice to know Thee
Renew before Thy throne
The solemn pledge we owe Thee
To go and make Thee known

Where other lords beside Thee
Hold their unhindered sway
Where forces that defied Thee
Defy Thee still today
With none to heed their crying
For life, and love, and light
Unnumbered souls are dying
And pass into the night

We bear the torch that flaming
Fell from the hands of those
Who gave their lives proclaiming
That Jesus died and rose
Ours is the same commission
The same glad message ours
Fired by the same ambition
To Thee we yield our powers

O Father who sustained them
O Spirit who inspired
Saviour, whose love constrained them
To toil with zeal untired
From cowardice defend us
From lethargy awake!
Forth on Thine errands send us
To labour for Thy sake

© 1930 Overseas Missionary Fellowship

NO ONE CAME TO CHURCH ON CHRISTMAS DAY

NO ONE CAME TO CHURCH

ON CHRISTMAS DAY

(By Rev Peter Playsted when the RAAF sent him to Darwin for Christmas)

Well I got up Christmas morning, and I gave a little skip;

I was feeling quite excited, and indeed a little hip;

And the birds they were all singing, in a Territorial way;

In the olden days I could have said things were looking rather gay!

And the church it was all ready, so the carols we could shout,

I even printed extra sheets, so no one would miss out.

But it all came down to nothing, I am very sad to say,

Cause no one came to church on Christmas Day!

I couldn’t quite believe it, as I stood there by the door,

The church could seat four hundred, possibly a hundred more.

We had stained glass, we had organs, we had air-conditioning too,

We had everything a church could have, and then a thing or two.

A bloke could preach his heart out in all sorts of different places,

This building could have fitted in a dozen different races,

But it didn’t make much difference as I stood there and surveyed,

Cause no one came to church on Christmas Day!

Now I sort of have recovered, but not altogether so,

Cause I had no family either; it was such a bitter blow,

To be up here in the bush like, with the mossies and the ticks,

And the Death Adders and Taipans; just a hick up in the sticks.

NT, people say here means “Not today and not tomorrow,”

But an empty church of this size is a special kind of sorrow.

So brethren, think of Tindal, and do not forget to pray,

That we’ll need every bloomin’ seat next Christmas Day!

PRIORITIES

Make me to understand the way of Your commandments;

So shall I talk of Your wonderful works

Behold, I have longed after Your commandments;

In Your righteousness give me life.

Psalm 119:27,40

 

 

EARTH'S TRINKETS

God aims, in all His dealings with His children,

to bring them to a high contempt of,

and deadly feud with the world...

And for no other cause ...

does the Lord withdraw from you

the childish toys

and the earthly delights

that He gives to others,

but that He may have you wholly to Himself.

- Samuel Rutherford

God aims in all His ways

To bring His children here

To view this world with high contempt

Not worth a passing tear.

He seeks your unshared love

And for no other cause

Your Lord removes time's short delights,

Its childish toys withdraws.

As new-born princes weep,

Heedless of crown or throne,

So heaven's heirs, distressed forget

The heritage they own.

- Faith Cook

THANKFULNESS

God's people have a sanctified use of all their creature comforts ...

What they have, be it little or much,

they have it from the love of God,

and with His blessings;

and then, behold,

all things are clean and sweet to them.

They come from the hand of a Father,

by the hand of a Mediator,

not in the channel of common providence,

but by the golden pipes

of the promises

of the covenant.

And hence it is,

that "a little that a righteous man has,"

having a heart to be content with it,

and the divine skill of enjoying God in it,

is better to him

than the riches of many wicked are to them;

and that "a dinner of herbs, where love is,"

and the "fear of the Lord," is better,

and yields abundantly more satisfaction,

than a stalled ox,

and hatred and trouble with it."

- Matthew Henry

A THANKFUL MINISTER’S WIFE

The Manse,

Miles,

Q,

1965

My dear Marion,

You will be very thrilled to hear this piece of news, dear. I had a tremendous surprise on Saturday morning. A large carton arrived at the front door, ... with a note for "Mrs White". You'll never guess what it was? No less than 'a Mix-Master' - a gift from anonymous donors. I'm not supposed to know but I have an idea.

There are several women here and some from Dulacca. Wasn't that a wonderful present? You will be just longing to use it, like all the others. We already squeezed all the lemons and oranges into juice concentrated, and made scrambled egg, etc.

Now dear girl, just thank the Lord for all His goodness.

Love and prayers,

Your loving Mother XX

THE REV MR SCOTT

[L M Montgomery's Story Girl entertained her cousins and friends on long summer evenings. All the trees in the family orchard were named after someone. The plums they were eating were the "Rev Mr Scott's plums".]

"The Rev Mr Scott was called to this congregation, and he laboured here long and faithfully, and was much beloved, though he was very eccentric."

"What does that mean?" asked Peter.

"Hush! It just means queer," said Cecily, nudging him with her elbow. "A common man would be queer, but when it's a minister, it's eccentric."

"When he got old," continued the Story Girl, "the Presbytery thought it was time he retired. He didn't think so; but the Presbytery had their way, because there were so many of them to one of him. He was retired, and a young man was called to Carlisle. Mr Scott went to live in town, but he came out to Carlisle very often, and visited all the people regularly, just the same as when he was their minister. The young minister was a very good young man, and tried to do his duty; but he was dreadfully afraid of meeting old Mr Scott, because he had been told that the old minister was very angry at being set aside, and would likely give him a sound drubbing, if he ever met him. One day the young minister was visiting the Crawfords in Markdale, when they suddenly heard Mr Scott's voice in the kitchen. The young minister turned pale as the dead, and implored Mrs Crawford to hide him. But she couldn't get him out of the room, and all she could do was to hide him in the china closet. The young man slipped into the china closet, and old Mr Scott came into the room. He talked very nicely, and read and prayed. They made very long prayers in those days, you know; and at the end of his prayer he said, 'Oh Lord, bless the poor young man hiding in the closet. Give him courage no' to fear the face of man. Make him a burning and shining light to this sadly abused congregation.' Just imagine the feelings of the young minister in the china closet! But he came right out like a man, though his face was very red, as soon as Mr Scott had done praying. And Mr Scott was lovely to him, and shook hands, and never mentioned the china closet. And they were the best of friends ever afterwards."

"How did old Mr Scott find out the young minister was in the closet?" asked Felix.

Nobody ever knew. They supposed he had seen him through the window before he came into the house, and guessed he must be in the closet –

because there was no way for him to get out of the room."

"Mr Scott planted the yellow plum-tree in Grandfather's time," said Cecily, peeling one of the plums, "and when he did it he said it was as Christian an act as ever he did. I wonder what he meant. I don't see anything very Christian about planting a tree."

I do," said the Story Girl sagely.______________

TO GIVE YOU A SMILE

 After digging to a depth of 100m last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wiring dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network one thousand years ago.

So as not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug 200m, and the headlines in the London newspapers read: "English scientists have found traces of 2000 year old optical fibres, and have concluded that their ancestors already had advanced high-tech digital telephone 1000 years earlier than the Scots."

One week later, the Irish press reported the following: "After digging as deep as 500m, Irish scientists have found absolutely nothing. They have concluded that 5000 years ago, their ancestors were already using mobile phones."

Some people give happiness wherever they go.

Others give happiness whenever they go.

LORD, WHAT ABOUT HIM?

When Peter saw the disciple Jesus loved following them, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."     

- John 21:21,22

In his book The Unchained Soul, Calvin Miller describes his own struggle with envy and pride. Another church member sold his house in 3 days. It took Miller's house a year to sell. Miller confessed to reacting to this man's boast, 'I just put that house in the hands of God and the Lord sold it in 3 days.' Miller would remind God of the depth of his own spirituality, compared with the shallowness of the other man's.

Any one of us can be selfishly interested in the way God is blessing someone else's life. Envy and anger can be the result. When the apostle Peter became curious about John's future, Jesus said it was none of Peter's business. He told him, 'You follow me,'                

- Our Daily Bread

At the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy asks, 'Please, Aslan, before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.'

'Dearest,' said Aslan very gently, 'you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.'

'Oh, Aslan!!' said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices ...

'And is Eustance never to come back here either?' said Lucy.

'Child,' said Aslan, 'do you really need to know that?'

And towards the end of The Horse and His Boy, Aravis has some sobering lessons to learn. Aslan has inflicted punishment for her cruel treatment of her servant.

She asks, 'Will any more harm come to her by what I did?'

'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your own story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.'

                                       - CS Lewis

TIRED OF CLEANING UP

AFTER THE FAMILY

OR THE CONGREGATION? 

Where no oxen are, the trough is clean;

but much increase comes

by the strength of an ox.   

-Proverbs 14:4

 

QUESTIONS WE ASK

What do you do when you have no musician?

"The Rejoice Hymn Base has a melody line which can be played over and over. Other folk play choirs singing or instrumental music from CD's - a service without music to help the singing is not good - unless the congregation is made up of a lot of Welshmen or Pacific Islanders."

Who said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose"?

It was Jim Elliot, martyred missionary to the Auca Indians of Equator. He was 22 when he wrote those words on his way to becoming a missionary. Seven years later in September 1955 he and his four colleagues were killed by the Aucas as they attempted to reach them with the gospel. Elisabeth and one or two of the other wives continued the mission and the Aucas were converted. I remember reading in a 'New Life' that one of the 'murderers' was bearing witness to Christ standing with a descendant of one of the martyred men at an Amsterdam Evangelists conference organised by Billy Graham. Elisabeth Elliot has written two books about it:- 'Through Gates of Splendour' and 'Shadow of the Almighty'.”

4.00