New Years Day 2023 

What resolutions, promises, or plans do we make at the beginning of the New Year? Are they ever fulfilled. And what about James 4:13-16 where we are encouraged not to boast about tomorrow and our plans? What is the context here? Is James teaching us to be passive about the future? According to this, should we as Christians be making plans for the future?

15th December 2022

Jesus came from Sychar to Galilee. From a place where years of animosity between Samaritans and Jews still stewed to a place where He was received and welcomed with joy. One believed upon Him due to His word and the other because they saw the signs and wonders He had performed in Jerusalem. Are miracles needed for us to believe? or ought we take HIm at His word?

Matthew 5:7 

Blessed are the Merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Jesus Christ is our supreme example when it comes to mercy and compassion. He healed the sick, delivered from demons, and fed the poor. As the apostle John warns us in his first epistle, if we say we abide in Him, we ought to walk as He walked. Not only should we render mercy to those of our household but to our enemies, and persecutors, for the Lord has had far more mercy on us than we deserve. Mercy is another principle found only in the true Christian. May we then be merciful and walk as He walked!

John 4:13-14 

Jesus tells the woman at the well that He can give her living water which will so quench her thirst, that she would never thirst again. To drink of Jacob's well means to continually return to satisfy the needs of the body. It is such with the water from the well of the world. We return and return and yet our thirst, our emptiness is never quenched. There is only one fountain from which to drink which will spring up within us unto everlasting life. It is not a hole in the ground, but a person, Jesus Christ the Wellspring of Life!

Hebrews 1:1-14

THE SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST is stated throughout this epistle.  Christ is greater than the prophets  Christ is greater than the angels  Christ is greater than Moses  Christ is greater than the Old Testament priesthood  The new covenant is greater than the old!

John 4:27-42 

After meeting Jesus at the well and having her life transformed by His drawing her, revealing her sin and ultimately who He really is, This woman leaves and heads straight to the city from where she came and belonged. The account of this woman should rock every lethargic Christian to the core. Such passion, such zeal, such urgency to go and share abroad, testifying to whom she met and what He had said. "Could this be the Christ." Here is a very challenging account for every professing Christian today whose life is taken up with so much energy for worldliness, yet bears almost no passion, zeal, or hunger for the things of God. We are told that many Samaritans believed in Christ because of this woman's testimony. What a question to ask ourselves: How many in our towns and villages have believed on Christ because we have testified of Him? Have we kept the good news to ourselves, assuming that someone else will go? Have we been greedy with the Gospel?

Matthew 5:6

John 4:1-26

Jesus Christ shows His great compassion all throughout the gospels and it is no different here in the account of the woman at the well. This is another place where the sovereignty of God is clearly visible and how God orchestrates everything to happen in the time and place He has decreed. Jesus gently draws this woman into understanding who she is, a rebellious sinner who needs a Saviour and finally reveals to her who He is. This He does not only to this woman but all whom He draws and chooses to reveal Himself.

Matthew 5:5 

The beatitudes are spiritual principles and spiritual conditions. They are not achieved naturally. It is a work of God. The philosophy of the world is the exact opposite. Don't worry..Be happy..Whatever makes you happy pursue it with all your might. You want it? Do whatever it takes to get it. To be poor in spirit, to mourn and to be meek is to be a Christian. But Meekness in the eyes of the world is seen as weakness...Is that really the case? Was Jesus, the epitome of meekness weak?

John 4:1-3 

When Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that He made and baptised more disciples than John the baptist, when His popularity burst forth, that He left Judea and departed for Galilee! Why did Jesus leave? Such introductions as these are not written just to fill gaps. Everything Jesus did He did with wisdom and purpose and these things are written for our instruction. Sometimes it is wisdom to retreat!!