Delayed blessings are dangerous

I Samuel 1 tells us about the story of Elkanah and his wives Peninnah and Hannah.

Penninah had children and Hannah didn't however Elkanah loved Hannah more.
Penninah teased Hannah, never allowing an opportunity to hurt hannah slip by.

...BUT that drove Hannah to pray to the Lord!

The things I learnt from this are:

1. God Blessd hannah with only one Child but that one child became famous...Did u ever hear of penninah's children? but you heard of prophet Samuel right?


2. God blesses you in his own time, to bring glory to His name


3. God shows what He can do - He's all powerful, Almighty!


4. Delayed blessings bring you back to God; you acknowledge that you wouldn't have done it without him.


5. You learn to place great value on your blessing


6. You build your faith and patience


7. when you wait for so long and still remain in Him, you show your trust and prove your love for Him.
   

The success of the wicked is short-lived. Sometimes, it may be hard to believe this but he who laughs last, laughs best.Delayed blessings are dangerous to those who are teasing and mocking you right now, to those who think you are believing in God who is powerless, to those who think you are crazy for having faith for this long.

Delayed blessings to you, means a double blessing!!

The Lord is good all the time!

Who is this Man?

At 12yrs old, He was teaching The Word to the congregation with the wisdom of His elders.

-he was a man who could calm every storm, no matter how violent.
-he could heal any disease, no matter how deadly.
-and he could solve any problem, no matter how complex.

This man is Jesus, our Lord!

He is with us as we go through our personal crises, emotional roller coasters or times of political turmoil and financial turbulence. He is with us and He never worries. He remained calm even when the fierce storm shook seasoned fishermen.
Jesus can simply speak a word and bring about complete restoration, healing and Peace. He can provide for our needs, no matter how things may be shaking all around us.

"They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!- Mark 4:41"
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* I remembered a song that was sang in church when i was younger. "It went: what manner of man is Jesus ?, hallelujah. He made the blind to see, hallelujah".

I started to think of the many things Jesus did in his time. I'm sure you will agree that all those things were pretty unusual. When God works, he works in mysterious ways to bring glory to his name*


The Lord is good all the time!

Purpose of life

* I received this email from a firend and i thought I'll share it because it touched me and made a lot of sense.I sincerely apologise for the length though. happy reading!*


Rick Warren is the person President elect Barak Obama has chosen to give the prayer at the inaugural ceremony on Jan 20th. No matter what faith you are, this is worth reading.
You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having 'wealth' from the book sales.

This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren 'Purpose Driven Life ' author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.
In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:People ask me, what is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.
One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body but not the end of me.I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.
We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.
No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes , or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,'which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her.It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, When the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.
First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.
Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.
Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.
Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know you more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That’s why we're called hum an beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.



The Lord is good all the time!

In His arms

It is night, dark outside.
In all their grandeur, the stars shine
twinkling brilliantly against the panoramic sky.
Nature follows me up and I must lie
down to sleep.
My energy dips;
The physical body is weak.

The soft pillow cushions my head.
The abstract world embraces my dream.
Drifting away to a world of orange and red
In his arms, I sleep…I sleep.

I see Angels gather, singing His praises
and the Host of heaven bowing in reverence.
Then Jesus looks down at His loved one,
ensuring my full protection.

Whilst in the real world,
my heart repletes with peace
and joy; joy like I’ve never known
as I sleep in His arms.

"He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul - Psalm 23:1-3"

* There are some days I'm absolutely stressed and things are not going so well but the only thing I can cling onto is God's peace.I wrote this to thank him for the provision of his peace.I don't know what i would do without it.


The Lord is good all the time!

Thought attack!

Nineteen year-old Liu Shih-Kun was an esteemed concert pianist in China until the cultural revolution banned all things of Western influnece. refusing to renounce his beloved music, Liu was deemed an enemy of the people, beaten and imprisoned.


There he languished in a tiny cell with no books, no paper and worst of all; no piano! Six years later, for propaganda reasons, he was asked to play in Beijing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. After years without an instrument to practice on, he performed brilliantly. Eighteen months later when he was finally released, he again played flawlessly. That Liu survived is remarkable, that his hands continued to move as if they'd never stopped playing is amazing.


His secret?.. stripped of everything musical, for seven and a half years, Liu disciplined himself to shut out negative thoughts and practice hour after hour on an imaginary piano.


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We often don't realise the extent to which our thinking contributes to our mental aguish. The earlier you stop the thought attacks, the easier it is to pull yourself together and get back on track. While the concept is simple, it's not easy to implement.


You can freeze out harmful thinking by capturing every thought and making it obedient to Christ. Your thoughts have power, to win over them you must submit to Christ and control what you allow your mind to dewll on.

Its the First day of a new month in the new year.
Some of us might have had a great start but for others, that may not have been the case.
It's not to late to start over. It's still early on in the new year, so change your mentality.
2009 is still the year you declared it to be even if things are not going so well right now.

Don't let your thoughts attack you.
Let Christ control your thoughts, you and your circumstances!


" ......And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ- 2 Corinthians 10:5"


The Lord is good all the time!