DAY 774 - Is Jesus Really Your Close Friend? (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

This blog/podcast has people from 111 countries visiting and more than 1/2 million visits.

Want to know why I have been writing and recording my blogs and podcast daily since August 10, 2009? Click these three links:

Confirmation from John Stott in 2009: 
http://bishopsilas.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
My MicroMacro Discipleship, A missing DNA in Discipleship Development: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.com/2009/07/introduction-micromacro-discipleship.html
Subject Shifting Devotion Method(Inspired by John Stott in 1991): http://bishopsilas.blogspot.com/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html

                               Today's Reading: 1 John 1:1-4

** If you would like to learn a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please read my “Count Down 5” from my Devotion on Fire blog:

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html

To use this simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:

 .Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf

Please click this link to read 1 John 1:1-4

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 John 1&version=ESV

Chinese: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=約 翰 一 書 1&version=CUV

Bible Study

     John gives a very important message to his readers right in the beginning. Jesus is not only our Saviour, our Lord and our King, He is also our close friend that we can be in fellowship with. Saviour can be so high up in heaven that we cannot see, Lord can be so high up in status that we cannot talk to, King can be so remote that we can hardly have a chance to meet, but a close friend. Wow! So intimate! How many close friends do you have really? 

Let's take a look at what Bishop N.T. Wright says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright ) :

      
      Yes, says John, and what's more our hands have handled … you touched it, this Life?  You touched him?  You handled him?  Yes, repeats John: we heard, saw and touched this from-the-beginning Life.  We knew him.  We were his friends.  And we still are his friends. Once the future has come into the present, the present is transformed for ever. 

N.T. Wright. The Early Christian Letters for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.131.

      So, how is this message touching your soul? How close are you with Jesus daily? 

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe":  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

Spiritual Journal

    The title I heard from Jesus today is: Is Jesus really your close friend?

    The message I got from Jesus today is another paradigm shift to all of us after yesterday's message from 2 Peter! Most of us know the hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus", right? But, how many Christians do you think we have on earth have Jesus as their close friends?

    Praise the Lord! I just had a very intimate fellowship with my friend Jesus! The past 30 minutes is perhaps one of the sweetest moment of my life!

    What happened? You might have the same "fellowship" with your friend Jesus if you click these two links now:
1. A video about the story behind the hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKjUoE2fack

2. A writing about the story behind the hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus":
http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/classic-favorite-hymn-born-from-tragedy/

    When I watched the video and read the writing about what happened to the author of this famous hymn, I had a most extraordinary intimate encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ as my closest friend. Joseph Scriven was an Irishman. His fiancee died one day before their marriage in 1844 and he left Dublin, Ireland to Port Hope, Ontario, Canada. He wrote the lyric of this song, a poem to his dying mother in 1857 after a transformation happened in his life due to his mother's situation and his loneliness. He found Jesus as his true and closest friend. For the rest of the story, you need to click that two links to listen yourself.

    Actually, I have never felt Jesus as my closest friend before as it was half an hour ago and also now. Oh! I just can't explain this intimate relationship and feeling to you now. It is so comforting and loving!

    Yes, Jesus is my closest friend. How about you?  

Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank you for being our closest friend. Help us to know and experience that you are truly our closest friend. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please click this link to worship with us -

恩友歌

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93mxBtmSQFU

What A Friend We Have in Jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SCorW9r_Is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X35JDIdQF5A

You may choose to follow my other daily blog: 

Daily Devotion on Fire 2(2 years plan -One year New Testament, one year Old Testament): 

http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire (3 years and 3 months plan, one chapter a day to finish reading the whole Bible): 

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build (40 days daily devotion- For Renewal or First Step for new Christians): http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Emmanuel330 (40 weeks First Step Bible Study): 

http://emmanuel330.blogspot.ca/

This blog:
Discipler 123 (Daily devotion using N.T. Wright's NT for Everyone as source)

http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/


Rev. Nicky Gumbel's daily devotion: Bible in One Year
http://www.htb.org.uk/bioy