THANK YOU JESUS  

OUR ETERNAL DEBT PAID

As I am writing this, it is Easter Saturday for 2024, and once again, Christians around the world are remembering with gratitude the inestimable gift of God in sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to earth to live as "one of us," in a human body for thirty three years, having divested Himself of His Godly attributes of omniscience (all-knowing), omnipresence (being limited to one place at any given time), and omnipotence (all-powerful), expressed in the Greek word kenosis or 'self-emptying.'

Jesus was the God-man. Although limited to a human body, he was still divine - being fully man and fully God, as the second Person of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

One of my very favourite worship songs in recent times is one that our church pastor introduced to the church probably about a year ago now, It is called: "Thank You Jesus For The Blood," and the singer is popular American worship leader/ songwriter, Charity Gayle, who with her husband, Ryan Kennedy and musicians David Gentiles and Steven Musso - all from Buffalo, New York state collaborated to write this Holy-Spirit anointed song:

I was a wretch, I remember who I was

I was lost, I was blind, I was running out of time

Sin separated, the breach was far too wide

But from the far side of the chasm

You held me in your sight

So you made a way, Across the great divide

Left behind Heaven's throne

To build it here inside

And there at the cross, You paid the debt I owed

Broke my chains, freed my soul

For the first time I had hope

Thank you Jesus for the blood applied

Thank you Jesus, it has washed me white

Thank you Jesus, You have saved my life

Brought me from the darkness into glorious light

You took my place, Laid inside my tomb of sin

You were buried for three days

But then You walked right out again

And now death has no sting, And life has no end

For I have been transformed

By the blood of the Lamb

Thank You Jesus for the blood applied

Thank You Jesus, it has washed me white

Thank You Jesus, You have saved my life

Brought me from the darkness into glorious light

There is nothing stronger

Than the wonder working power of the blood

That calls us sons and daughters

We are ransomed by our Father 

Through the blood, the blood

Glory to His name, Glory to His name

There to my heart was the blood applied

Glory to His name.

This song encapsulates the message of Easter. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that: All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. In other words, our sin nature inherited from the first man, Adam has separated us from fellowship and relationship with our Creator God.

The apostle Paul again expands on this in Romans 6:23 where he says:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 5:7-11 tell us the Good News that:

Now most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God's condemnation.

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of His Son while we were still His enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of His Son.

So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends with God.

Under the Old Covenant, it was necessary for the children of Israel to continually make blood sacrifices of animals for the remission or forgiveness of sins. Indeed, Hebrews 9:22 tells us that:.....without the shedding of blood, there is no remission, or forgiveness of sins.

When Jesus, the sinless Son of God died on the cross at Calvary a little over 2,000 years ago, He paid the price required by our Holy God once and for all for the sins of everyone who would live from that time forward. HOWEVER, it does require a response from the individual of repentance from sin, and acknowledgement that Christ died for his or her sins, and an invitation from the person to the Lord Jesus Christ to become their Saviour and Lord with a willingness to commit to following Him.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world from many and varied ethnic, and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds have experienced the life-transforming power of the resurrected Christ in not only saving them from the eternal consequences of sin and rebellion towards God, but whose lives have also been healed from physical and mental illnesses and delivered from life-destroying bondages such as drug addiction, pornography and alcoholism. Truly, the Word of God can be fully trusted, when as Jesus stated in John 8:31,32. "If you continue in My Word, then are you My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." The truth of God's Word in you indeed shall be a liberating force.

I pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe Him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else - not only in this world but also in the world to come.

Christ's bodily resurrection is a well-documented historical fact. It has been stated that there is more proof for the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for any other fact or incident of Roman history.

HE'S ALIVE!! This Easter, in 2024, you who are reading this could make the most important decision of your life - to commit your life to Jesus Christ, and to invite Him to become your Saviour and Lord. Your life will never be the same again!

You don't have to say fancy prayers using long theological words. The most important thing is that what you pray is from the heart.

You could pray something like this:

Lord Jesus, I acknowledge that I am a sinner, and that my sin has separated me from knowing You. I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sin, in my place, and that He rose again from the dead. Please forgive me of my sin, and i ask You to become my Saviour and Lord of my life. Amen.

As you begin your new life as a Christian, I encourage you to:

Start reading the Bible, and read some every day. Start with the Gospel of Mark or John in the New Testament.

Spend time praying to the Lord in your own words from your heart - and listen for Him to answer.

Find a Bible-believing church and start attending regularly, so that you can be taught the Word of God, and be built up and encouraged as you fellowship with other Christians

Tell someone of your decision to follow Christ. Your personal testimony is powerful and may lead those you share with to want to know Jesus too, as they see the transformation in your life.

God Bless! Jesus is the best friend you will ever have!

BIBLE READING PLAN SUGGESTION 

    From the time a person is born again of the Spirit of God and becomes a Christian, they are encouraged that one of the primary disciplines of the Christian if they want to grow and mature in their relationship with the Living God, is to regularly - preferably daily, read and study the Word of God, the Bible.

There are many verses in the Bible itself that speak to us of the vital importance of Bible reading, study and meditation.

Obviously there are also other disciplines for the Christian life that also are vitally important and necessary for the child of God to grow in the knowledge and grace of God. These include:

- A consistent prayer life

- Being planted in a local Bible-believing, Spirit-filled church home where they can not only sit under anointed teaching and preaching of the Word of God, but also 

- Fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ, as we are commanded in Hebrews 10:3-5

- Bearing witness to the reality of the Spirit of God working in our lives by testifying of God's goodness to us in specific ways. As the apostle John records in Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

- Becoming active in the local church, asking the Holy Spirit to show you your specific motivational gift as recorded in Romans 12:3-8 and then trusting God to enable you to outwork this gifting

- Be prayerful and open to the Spirit of God to use you for His glory and for the edifying of the church and individuals in the church by operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit as outlined in 1Corinthians 12.

The Word of God provides a sure foundation for everything undertaken by individual Christians and the wider church body. 

Although in church life, the Bible does not always give minute details about, for example how worship in church is meant to be conducted, or how church services are to be planned, the Word of God does give very clear instruction on matters such as leadership, the importance of celebrating Communion regularly, and the need for the five-fold ministry gifts to the church as outlined in Ephesians 4:11-13 to equip believers for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son Of God.......It must be said also that most of the ministry, especially in relation to evangelism should be undertaken in the market place, outside the four walls of the church. As Pastor Tak Bhana, Senior Pastor of Church Unlimited in Auckland, New Zealand stated recently on a series of his "Running With Fire" programs on Vision Christian Radio here in Australia - the title of the series being "Seek His Face For Your Workplace," in a sense, wherever our sphere of influence is, whether it be at work, home, your street and neighbourhood, etc., in those specific spheres, the Christian is in a sense the "pastor" to those he or she interacts with, shining the light of God's love by our lives as well as our words. As has often been said, for many people in our nations, we, as Christians may be the only "Bible" peope read - seeing Christlikeness lived out.

Back to the title of this short blog post: "Bible Reading Plan Suggestion," there are many good Bible reading plans available to help the Christian systematically read through the entire 66 books of the Bible in one year, or in other time frames. Some start from Genesis and work through from start to the end of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Others offer readings daily from the Old and New Testaments. There are also chronological Bible reading plans which seek to take the reader through the Bible in the order that the events took place over time, which in some cases will see the order of reading of the books change from that in which they appear in the Bible compilation. There are also plans that seem to provide daily readings from Old and New Testament books which seem to be randomly chosen.

Over the decades that I have been a Christian, I have sought often to begin the year with a Bible reading plan that would take me through the whole Bible systematically in one year, the readings being allotted to each of the twelve months of the year, day by day.

To be totally honest, although my intentions have been good, I have always found that after a while, I have missed the odd day or more, and then given up the reading plan, thinking it is too hard to catch up.

A couple of weeks ago, at the beginning of this year, I prayed that the Lord would show me a good Bible reading plan I could follow and hopefully stick to. 

The Lord led me to a reading plan devised by The Navigators ministry, a trusted discipling ministry founded in 1933, whose mission has always been: "to know Christ, to make Him known, and help others to do the same."

The Bible reading plan has the months numbered, not named, Month 1 to Month 12. For each month, there are four readings for each day, but only for 25 days of the month. This is so that if the reader misses a day or so, they have time to catch up before the end of the month. Every day's readings consist of two from the New Testament and two from the Old Testament. Longer chapters are broken up into segments as shown in the Bible, so that each day's readings are quite easily doable.

I am looking forward to following this reading plan this year, and I firmly believe that I will be able to exercise the self discipline necessary to consistently progress through the year to finally read the whole Bible cover to cover. 

If you, like me, have found it difficult to stay with Bible reading plans that are designed specifically to be read from January 1 to December 31, then this Navigators plan may be just what you are looking for.

Another suggestion I would make is: If you find it somewhat daunting to read chapters of genealogies and other seemingly mundane details, as important as their inclusion in the Bible is, a suggestion I have is to listen to those chapters on a good audio Bible recording. There are a number of well-voiced audio Bibles in various versions. For me, personally, I cannot go past the wonderfully recorded and produced recordings of the King James Bible by Alexander Scourby - amazingly recorded back in the early 1950's. He has an authoritative voice and he reads with wonderful expression, and sensitivity to the text. I do not know if he was a committed, born again Christian, but to my mind, he certainly read as if he was anointed of the Holy Spirit. He was an actor, yes, but I believe he read with great conviction that what he was reading was worthy of his very best reading input.