CONNECTIONS

Have you got the connection?

James 5:13-20 (Message)
Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you've sinned, you'll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God's truth, don't write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.

Year 1 PC ~ Day 4.

POSSIBILITIES

Just think of the possibilities for our respective communities, if each Corps and Social Centre were healing centres. A place where the ministry of God the Holy Spirit has free reign to bring healing to burdened lives. Where the lives weighed down by the cares of the world can be unloaded. Where people receive emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual healing. The Apostle Peter calls for people to leave their burdens and cares with Jesus, who can meet their needs.
1 Peter 5:7 (KJV)
Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Some may question whether this is a possibility in this day, and age. Peter was following in the footsteps of Jesus, driven by the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in his life. He was also reflecting the promises within God’s Holy Word revealed in the second book of the Bible. Here God’s reflects who he is, and his ministry to the people.
Exodus 15:26 (KJV)
And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.

Can we be bold enough, to have healing connections available for the burdened in our communities?

1st Year: PC ~ Day 3.

1 PC

The Salvation Army Australian Southern Territory is now in the era of PC, and we need to measure our growth and responses in the PC mode. No, I’m not talking about computers. This is the era of mission as it relates to “Post Connections 07” we go forward with new vision and strategies to aggressively make meaningful connections in our communities in the name of JESUS.

Year 1 PC ~ Day 2.

John 15:4 (KJV)
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

HOW SMART ARE WE?

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

This is an interesting question, so it follows that the TV Show has some appeal to people like me. I have seen the show a couple of times and have been impressed by the young people who represent the 5th graders. Their immediate responses to the question, the steely resolve when questioned by their opponent, the obvious joy in knowing that the older person opponent is struggling to find the answers, and their freedom.

In other places in our land, and in some other nations, this snapshot of life is far from reality. Where severe malnutrition, poverty, slavery, war, and human trafficking, steal the potentiality of life from young children. This is a situation that the world cannot ignore. In many cases, some people are getting very rich, without any regard to the human lives that are being destroyed.

Do we contribute to the destruction of other lives? How smart are we, really?


Micah 6:8 (KJV)
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

IRAQ

These photos are from Iraq, only a few months old. When it was mooted that Iraq was to be invaded, I was totally against this invasion. Mr Bush and others proceeded to influence the world to push ahead with the invasion idea, and strategy. I am deeply saddened that Mr. Howard has involved Australia in this crime.
In our land Australia it is a crime to injure people, to use force on another person, to carry weapons, to retaliate when attacked, to defend your property from an intruder. In fact you have to have your building set up so that if an intruder breaks in and something happens like fire, all the exits have to open from the inside with ease, because if they are injured you are at fault. So if this is the way Australians are to act, then why are we involved in the plundering of another nation and its people?
The evidence thus far is that the Iraq nation is in civil unrest, with the death toll climbing daily. The brutality of the opposition forces has been underestimated, and the initial invasion did nothing to produce a better way of reacting as a community. This war has brought shame on the Christian community as non-Christian communities flag this event by the Western World as a Christian backed enterprise of suffering.

How are we to say to these people in Iraq that a Christian does not operate this way?


Zech. 3:9-10
For behold the stone that I have laid before Joshua; upon one stone shall be seven eyes: behold, I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and under the fig tree. (KJV)

WHAT?

As you look around the community, what moves you?
Is it the community that is separated from God by their own rebellion to his will? Is it the amazing growth in the attitudes that result in aggression and violence? Is it humanity suffering in sickness, and deformity? Is it the emotionally scared, who have abandoned hope and abuse their bodies by any number of means? Or is it the seemingly inability of the people of God to meet needs that are presented in community?

An amazing thing is that often the people of God are unable to cope with the support of their brothers and sisters in the church. We are afraid to be vulnerable and confess our needs and errors. We tend to live our lives under our own authority, without appropriating the promises in God’s Word. We see the public prayer altar as a place of life failure, rather than a place of refreshment in spirit, soul, and body.

How can we reach out to those alienated from God, if we do not know what we have?



James 5:13-16
Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (KJV)

Your CHOICE!

I have heard utterances from some who call themselves the people of God that a sermon should only be 6 minutes long. From these people the celebration of the Word of God seems to have little relevance.

How then would they cope with the Apostle Paul, who spoke all through the night to sun-up? How would they cope with William Booth, who spoke with such passion and fire, for an hour or more? In their thinking Paul, and William Booth, would have been a wasting their efforts! However history would hold the Champions of God with a much different view, and esteem.

It would seem that the problem is not so much with the speaker, but the hearer. On the surface it is simply a rejection of the speaker. With further analytical discernment, the evidence is a total rejection of the Word of God. Who then, in their right mind would openly go out in opposition to not only the Word of God, but also God himself, and his servants?


Joshua 24:14-15
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. [15] And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (KJV)