(February 2003 Edition)
At the Lord's Table - "Eat for the journey is too much for you"
Keeping on Loving Each Other - at a recent wedding
Focus on good things. How do you see yourself in the truth? It is very important that you have a good self-image, because the way you think, so will you be. If you stay focused on bad, low or depressing thoughts, this will only bring you misery. Don’t continue to see yourself as a failure. Be positive and grow in the Lord. He will bless you and prosper your way before Him. Remember: it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Negative thoughts bring frustration and unnecessary burdens.
Elisha was confident of the blessing before he received it
The way in which you ‘see’ things has tremendous effect on your journey to
the Kingdom. Elisha asked Elijah for a double portion of his blessing (II
Kgs. 2:9-13). Elijah told him that if he saw him when he was taken away,
then his request would be granted. At the very time Elisha ‘saw’ Elijah
taken away, he believed that this blessing would fall upon him. It wasn’t
long after when Elisha shouted, “My father, my father, the chariot of
Israel and the horsemen thereof!” Elisha saw himself receiving the
blessings even before it actually happened.
Abraham saw the land of Canaan
In Genesis 13:14-18, God told Abraham to lift up his eyes and ‘look’, for
all the Land which he ‘saw’ would be given to him and his seed forever.
Abraham couldn’t see the whole land with his eyes, but he ‘saw’ all the land
by faith. He ‘saw’ himself obtaining the promises and God called him His
friend. Abraham focused on the eternal things of God.
Press forward
You must have hope, vision, and spiritual perspectives in life. Paul
exhorts us in Philippians 3:13-14 to reach forth unto those things that are
before us, pressing toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus. We need to stop looking and seeing the here and now, and think about
the achievements we can make in life. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You
can do all things through Christ who lives in you. There is nothing too
hard for God to do, so we are told in His word.
Put self aside and ‘see’ yourself leaning on the everlasting arms. Are all your friends full of negative thoughts, and that is pulling you down? Then it is time that you encourage them and help them to develop positive attitudes toward life.
Be a winner
A
young contestant recalled how, for two consecutive years, she became first
runner-up in the Miss World contest. She selected hundreds of cassettes of
successful contestants and watched them keenly. Not surprisingly, the next
time she entered the contest she was crowned Miss World. When asked if she
was nervous as she walked up for the prize, she said “No!” because
she had gone up the aisle many times before.
What does God expect of you?
See yourself the way God would like to see you – a positive, energetic
servant in His vineyard, having strong faith in the promises of God. God
expects the vineyard to be fruitful and yield abundant lives dedicated to
His service. If we fail to maintain the vineyard properly, good fruits
cannot be harvested (I Cor. 15:58). It is by faith in God and Christ Jesus
that we see ourselves as the children of God, heirs and joint heirs of the
Kingdom of God.
Have you seen Jesus?
Patience and perseverance may be all we need to succeed in whatever we are
doing. The disciples had to ‘see’ Jesus to follow him the way they did
after he had left them to go to the Father. Not only did they see him
physically, but also they ‘saw’ him as their Redeemer, Savior and King.
Their faith was fully grounded in the promises he offered. “Come and
see”, will always be the answer.
Have you ‘seen’ the Lord Jesus Christ? He is right beside you with outstretched arms ready to hold and lead you in the paths of righteousness. Wake up from slumber and sleep, and ‘see’. Abide in him, for this is the essence of true discipleship.
“He healed them all”
At this time, many of our beloved stalwart brethren and sisters in the
Caribbean are ill and even bedridden. In Matthew 4:24, we are told that
they brought unto Jesus people that had divers diseases and he healed all
who had faith in him. Let us look far beyond our present evil time, and
‘see’ God’s Anointed One upon the earth again, standing in the midst of
suffering humanity, purging the effects of sin and bringing restoration and
gladness.
Gerzel Gordon
[I am greatly concerned about the depressing effects of the present political, economic and social situation throughout the Caribbean. It is crushing the spirit of even our greatest stalwarts. G.G.]
In the village, besides the farms, there were a few other buildings, including a school and several churches. The churches would compete all the time for members. The head teacher was the only educated person in the whole area. The pastors, policemen, and ordinary people were all illiterate. I was not able to go to school every day, because I had to work on the farm at a very early age. We used slates to write on. I tried hard in my reading lessons, which was useful later on when it came to learning the truth. I had to go to church regularly. I don’t remember now what the church was called, but like all the churches in the area, the services consisted only of redemption songs all sung at the top of our voices, clapping and stomping, a long sermon with the pastor shouting and screaming at us young people to stop flirting and fornicating, followed by testimonies from us pretending that the blood of Christ had cured us from those terrible sins. I remember giving a Holy Ghost testimony at the age of ten that the blood had cured me from the sin of adultery. It was all godliness without the power thereof.
I was sent by my family to seek my fortune in the big city of Kingston. When I got there, the city was still being rebuilt. Before the disaster, Kingston had been built of bricks. Rebuilding was mostly in a material called nog which had sturdy wooden framing. By 1922, Kingston was a city of nog buildings with roofs made of shingles, a lot safer than the earlier brick construction. I found it was easy to get a job in construction and I became a skilled carpenter and builder.
In 1951, hurricane Charlie devastated Jamaica, and many thousands of Jamaicans lost their homes, including my wife, Doris, and myself. The government built some houses for the homeless, and we moved into 17 Olympic Way, our address for the next 50 years, although I did build another larger house on the same lot some years later.
I was 46 years of age when a very small thing totally changed the lives of Doris and myself. At that time there was only one newspaper in Jamaica, The Daily Gleaner. “Gleaner cars” used to leave the North Street pressroom with bundles of papers to deliver to every corner shop throughout Jamaica. It was said that one in four adult Jamaicans bought the Gleaner every day. If you couldn’t read, you looked at the pictures. Of course in those days there was no television, very few radios, and even fewer telephones. People depended on their daily newspapers for news, advertisements, jobs, times of sunrise and sunset, and the tides.
One day in 1954 I saw a little notice in the Gleaner offering a free book called Preaching the Truth. I was intrigued. I wrote for the book to an address in Georgetown, Guyana. In a short time, I received the book, and also letters from two ladies called Spence and Odle. These letters were so encouraging, and the little book was an eye-opener. In fact, Doris and I read it so many times that I could almost say it by heart. The most compelling thing about the story in the book was that the people took their religion seriously. Up to that time, I had thought of religion as only some kind of entertainment, having no real importance in daily life.
One day a young white man came to our home and introduced himself as Alan. I was amazed because he came on foot into our poor neighbourhood and not in a taxi or a car. He said that he had received our address from the same Spence who had written to us. He began to visit us regularly, and then told us about a series of Bible lectures in Kingston to be given by a visiting speaker from Britain. Those lectures by Harry Whittaker finally set us firmly on the way of life. The strange part to me was that although the Bible teaching was so clear, none of the big churches seemed to want to teach it. In fact, The Star newspaper even had a big headline warning people against Harry and his Bible lectures. It seemed so odd that this funny little group meeting in an old school should know more about the Bible than anyone else, but we realised that we had to do something about it. I was baptised on the 27 October 1956, a few weeks after Harry had left Jamaica. Doris followed me through the water soon after.
Although we were only a small group then, we had many activities. I used to help with meetings in the Slipe Pen Hospital, where eventually we started a branch ecclesia. We decided to start a Sunday school and also a Bible study class in our own yard at Olympic Way, and both of those went on for years, yielding several baptisms. For a time our school was much bigger than the one held in the meeting hall.
I must say that because of my faith, I got a lot of ridicule and scorn from other men, especially from neighbours and friends, and even some of my own relatives. This was very hard to bear, as I wasn’t very good at explaining to these people the special things about my faith, and often they would get the better of the argument. The Muslims gave me the hardest time, as they are so cock sure of themselves and deride everything you try to say in defence.
It was a joyful day for us both when our youngest son James was baptised. But right now he needs the fire of God to inspire him more.
What shall I say more? Not all Christadelphians turned out to be the wonderful people I thought they would be. Is it that God puts His truth into earthen vessels so that people will worship Him and not us? We thought that we would get much more support for the work we tried to do down in Olympic Gardens. It has been a long hard fight of faith, with so little to show for it. But the Bible says that only he or she who endures to the end shall be saved, and that’s where I will leave it for now.