Yesterday was our 27th Wedding Anniversary! Praise the Lord!
Michelle, my dearest wife, I love you very, very, very much!!!
Please see two pictures we took on the day of our 25th Wedding Anniversary.Three months after Michelle got leukemia! And some other warm, romantic pictures too.
Please pray for our family that we can love each others and share God's love to more people.
Today's Reading: John 8: 30-36
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read John 8: 30-36
Bible Study
Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. "If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you."
John 8: 31-32 (The Message)
Do you want to be free from sin, free from death, free from injustice, free from debt, free from tyranny, free from fear...? Verse 32 gives us a promise from Jesus that we can be free if we "stick" with the truth and to live it out then we will be free. Then you ask, "What is truth?" Throughout John's gospel, with 1: 14, 18 and 14: 6, we know that Jesus himself is the truth.
It means if you "stick" with Jesus, listen to him daily and then live out what Jesus tells you then you will be free! Simple? Too simple? Again, it is a relational question. If you have a daily intimate personal relationship with Jesus then you will be free.
Do you want to be free?
Have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Free!
There is a very important inspiration from N.T. Wright today that will give us a critical challenge. He says:
The charge Jesus is putting to his contemporaries, then, is that they are confusing two sorts of family membership: being children of Abraham and being children of God. They have been assuming that being children of Abraham means automatically being children of God, but John the Baptist, Jesus and the early Christians, especially writers like John and Paul, insisted that this wasn't so. In fact, they insisted that the children of Abraham had been deeply and seriously infected by the disease of sin, the disease of which the rest of the human race was already suffering. The people called to bring God's light to the world were instead sharing in the darkness. But there was still a chance. If only they would hear and receive Jesus' words, they could themselves be set free from the slavery they didn't even know they were in.
What I heard from Jesus is an invitation for us to replace the word "Abraham" to the name of your church or your denomination. For example, I am an Anglican and I am a member of Richmond Emmanuel Church. As an Anglican and a member of Richmond Emmanuel Church does not automatically makes me a child of God. I can be an Anglican and a member of Richmond Emmanuel Church without a true relationship with God! Because of that I would not be free and I would not know because I think being an Anglican and a member of Richmond Emmanuel Church means automatically being a child of God!
Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14: 6
You want to be free, right? Then you know what to do now? Do it and be with Jesus every day, listen to him and to live out what he tells you! There is no other way to be free!
Dear Lord Jesus,
Help us to be with you each day, listening to you and living out what you tell us to do so that we can be truly free. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Chinese praise song - 全地至高是我主 You Are Top No. 1
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