COMPASSION

By Odon Bulamba (21st Sept 2011)

“Because of the LORD’s great love
we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22-23

Compassion of the Lord is new every morning and He never misses a morning. Every day of creation, God created something new and each day the sun rose and gave a new day. Because we are created in the image of God, we are also pushed to work every day as a new day. How do you start your day?

“In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly.” Psalm 5:3

Each morning he introduced his day to God but we wake up most mornings and don’t care about the compassion God has on us. We plan our day but there is no guarantee that we will even live to see it. Every day comes with new challenges and a fight so the best thing to do when we wake up is to tell God, ‘thank you for this day, please protect me from temptation” and start your day with joy which is a challenge.

Every morning we have a schedule of what we do…shower, breakfast etc. During your morning schedule do you have breakfast God? He’s present for us and invited us for a new day and do we also invite him into our schedule? Do we encourage others to pray to God every new day and ask God to support us because each day has challenges.

When you panic you can easily sin, judge others, and criticize them because we have started the day without the fruit of the Holy Spirit (no patience, joy, love etc) and we start to act as a part time Christian. A part time Christian is a Christian who acts like a Christian when things are good but when things are hard, they lose their joy and act like a non-Christian.

Ex 32:22, “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil.”

Aaron blamed others for the building of the golden calf and do we do the same when our mornings go bad? Why don’t we find a way to find a solution rather than blaming others? Whenever a sin is there, instead of asking for forgiveness, we start to justify and blame others.

After creating, God said, “it is good”. Do you have a plan for your day where God will say, “it is good”? Do you have a schedule for you diary to accomplish something good for God? If you find challenges, pray and God will support you but if you panic and fear, you might hurt someone.

Our faith is built by going through tests. When you go through a test, what do you do? Do you complain, blame others, criticize other? What can destroy your day? Your anger, lack of self-control?

Galations 5:22&23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law”.

Start your day with the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Start your day with love and joy and patience and kindness so that when the person driving in front of you is driving too slow, you will have enough love to think, ‘maybe the person is sick,’ rather than judging them. Our judgements are not God’s judgements. We might think some animals (such as hyenas) are ugly but God said everything was good. Even if you have a great knowledge, don’t minimize others who you think are not at your level.

Ask God for help every second and start your day with God. Fight and pray and follow in God’s footsteps during your challenges – if you give your problems to God, He’ll take care of them. We have to imitate Jesus Christ.

Each night before sleeping evaluate your day, was it 8/10 today. Try to evaluate yourself out of ten and whenever you have a low score, ask God to help you tomorrow to win the battle. If you start your morning very well with the Lord, nothing will shake your day, you’ll start to praise the Lord for every situation.

Accept to be blamed, accept your soul to blame you, accept others to tell you that you were wrong somewhere and don’t fight with negative words or feelings. Even when you feel like you can kill someone, don’t let that anger cause you to sin, ask God to help you. Sin is not a disaster, just ask God and people for forgiveness and move ahead.

Every morning say, “help me to have a lovely day in you and remove pride so I can have a good day in you”. In every situation and second we must praise God and this will ensure that we please God during our day. Give five minutes every morning to tell God how grateful you are for Him showing you His compassion every morning.

Revelation 11 (Part 8) The Day of the Lord

By Odon Bulamba (7th April 2006) summary only

On the day of the Lord, God will destroy the world at His coming and the first people He will destroy are us. Today most of the Bible teachers are liars, teaching the Word of God only to gain money and the teach us to disregard things in the Bible saying they are old and only for the time of the Corinthians or telling us that the message wasn’t intended for us but only for the Ephesians etc.

So tell me, if this is only for the Ephesians or for the Corinthians, what is for us today? I have never seen a chapter in the Bible for New Zealanders or for the French. The book of Chinese or Russian is not there. Some teachers tell us because we are not from Corinth and we live in the 21st Century, then this book is not for us. But God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, so we have to take it and accept it and if we are wrong, we still have grace to repent.

Today preachers will leave aside teachings that might disturb those in the church who give a lot of tithe. They won’t talk about smoking or drinking because those that smoke and drink might run away from the church and their money will run away with them. So the preacher must talk about something else and attack the poor to protect the rich people’s mistakes.

Today preachers will tell you to buy their book to find solution to your problems instead of pointing you to the Bible. You will never find solutions in their books because the writer aims to make money. God is the solution. Money has become a problem in the church today; the preacher is given the gift to preach freely, so why don’t the preach for free?

Today we can easily criticise our politicians but what about the kind of politics we are doing? We are destroying the church of God. The day of the Lord is the day that Jesus Christ will come back, we will suffer and God will punish those who have been selfish. We want to make profit and we stop others benefiting, we want all the glory for ourselves and nothing for others. When someone is in trouble, we don’t even take a minute to kneel down and pray for them, we don’t have time to intercede for them but when we cross hard times, that’s when we remember others and we ask them to pray for us.

When the Son of man comes back on earth He will ask us, “what did you do with the coins I gave you when I left? Have you used them?” What will we answer, “I was too busy, I didn’t have time?” God will answer, “I will take them away from you and you will be punished.”

Let’s pray. Pray for yourself, for hope, for faith, for love and pray for someone who is next to you in this room and for everybody here and commit each one and their problem’s to God’s hands.

Words that Crush

By Colleen Podmore

‘I will put a muzzle on my mouth’ Psalm 39:1

This week we are going to continue with the same theme that Hayley introduced last week. She started with a verse from Psalm 39:1 and then we looked at some verses in James, which talk about how powerful and destructive our words can be.

With our words we can praise God and with our words we can curse people (James 3:9).

James also makes the point that if we call ourselves Christians, yet don’t control our words, then our faith is worthless (James 1:26).

Interestingly, one of the themes that keeps coming up again and again in the Old testament is that the Israelites constantly grumbled/murmured/complained about their situation time and time again and God was not pleased with them.

There are many examples in Exodus & Numbers (Exodus 14:10; 15:22; 16:1; 16:19; 16:27; 17:1; 32:1; Numbers 11:1; 11:4; 12:3; 14:2; 16:1,41; 20:3; 21:1), but on the other hand the Psalms are full of laments which are cries of sorrow but could also be classified as complaints and God is ok with these. I think the fundamental difference might be that one complains about God (He brought us out of Egypt where we were better off. This manna that God provides is hideous) rather than complaining too God (God you are good, look at our situation and help us please). The laments in the Psalms often reveal great confidence and faith in God during difficult times (Psalm 4:5).

If we read the Proverbs, we will find many warnings about the tongue and our words eg ‘When words are many sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise’ Pr 10:19 and my favourite ‘Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue’ Pr 17:28.

Sometimes we are not even aware of the way we speak, as Hayley said last week, we can be sure that whatever is in our hearts will surely come out of our mouths. If we need healing in areas or harbour bitterness and unforgiveness, be sure our words will reflect this maybe by sarcasm, gossip etc. I have prepared a list of negative ways of speaking with their dictionary meanings to help us to become more aware and also a list of verses which will illustrate these ways of speaking.

Finally the antidote to all these negative speech patterns is to have thankful hearts, to be grateful and content. Paul knew the path to true peace and joy. He said that in whatever circumstances, he had learned to be content, whether living in plenty or want because ‘he could do all things through Him who gives him strength’ (Phil 4:13)

What is the name of the speech that is being illustrated in these Scriptures?
 
Proverbs 6:17................................................................
2 Corinthians 12:20............................................................
Ephesians 4:31....................................................................
1 Corinthians 13:4-6...........................................................
Proverbs 3:34; Psalm 1:1....................................................
Titus 3:2..............................................................................
1Timothy 2:8.......................................................................
Numbers 14:2.....................................................................
Numbers 13:33..................................................................
Numbers 21:5....................................................................
Exodus 20:7.......................................................................
2 Corinthians 8:20.............................................................
1 Thessalonians 5:20.........................................................
Psalm 12:2.........................................................................
 
One area of my speech that I want to change is in the area of:
 
...................................................................................................
 
 
Glossary of Speech Terms
 
Blasphemy – to speak irreverently of God. Take God’s name in vain, to curse and swear
 
Boastful – to speak with vanity, to brag, to praise oneself
 
Contempt – scorn, disregard. Look down upon as unworthy
 
Contentious – strife, debase, argue, touchy
 
Criticise – to pass judgement, to censure
 
Cursing – to utter a wish of evil against
 
Complain – to express distress, lament, grumble, discontent
 
Cynical – sneering, distrustful of people’s motives
 
Derision – ridicule, mock, laugh at with scorn
 
Exaggeration – to represent as greater than truth or justice will warrant
 
Flattery – to praise unduly and insincerely. Pr 26:28; 28:23
 
Gossip – idle talk about others regardless of fact. Pr 11:13; 18:8
 
Haughty - proud
 
Innuendo – an illusive remark usually deprecatory, an indirect hint
 
Irony – a mode of speech in which the meaning is the opposite of that actually expressed
 
Lying – habit of being untruthful. Pr 12:22; 14:5; 15:4;
 
Mockery – laugh at, ridicule, to make a fool of. Pr 14:6
 
Nagging – worry by constant fault finding. Pr 14:1
 
Profanity – irreverence, the use of bad language
 
Quarrel –dispute, wrangle, disagree. Pr 19:13; 15:1; 15:18
 
Rebuke – to censure, reprove, reprimand. Pr 9:8; 12:18
 
Rudeness – uncivil, unwholesome talk, vulgar, offensive
 
Sarcasm – taunt, scoffing jibe, veiled sneer,
 
Satire – use of irony, sarcasm, invective or wit. Pr10:10
 
Scorn – extreme disdain, contempt, object of derision
 
Slander – false or malicious statement about a person
 
Swearing – to utter, affirm, declare an oath, to use the name of God or sacred things profanely
 
Vulgarity – coarse or offensive
 
‘When words are many sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise’ Proverbs 10:19
 
‘The LORD detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful’ Proverbs 12:22
 
‘He who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin’ Proverbs 13:3
 
‘Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue’ Proverbs 17:28
 
‘He who answers before listening – that is his folly and his shame’ Proverbs 18:13
 
‘The tongue has the power of life and death...’ Proverbs 18:21
 
‘He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity’ Proverbs 21:23
 
‘Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips’ Proverbs 27:2

Revelation 11 (Part 7) Adam & Eve

By Odon Bulamba (7th April 2006)

God gave control to Adam for everything in the world; diamonds, gold, petrol, animals, lions….what more do they need? Nothing. No danger and they have all the wealth of the world, what more do they need? There was only one danger, God said, “Don’t eat this fruit”. Adam thought he could easily overcome a simple thing like that but the more that time passed by, the more that human beings felt unsatisfied. This is the same with us, the more time passes by, the more we forget about God’s provisions for us and we get tempted and sin.

After Adam and Eve sinned, God came looking for them. He asked them, “who told you that you are naked?” Instead of answering, “my conscience”, Adam kept silent. Maybe they ate the fruit in the morning and God waited the whole day until evening to see if His friend could come and say, “I’ve sinned” but Adam was a bad friend and kept quiet. How many times do we keep quiet when we make mistakes and we wait for others to discover and if they don’t, we quickly forget it.

Adam blamed God for giving him that woman who caused him to sin and how many times do we also judge God. If God existed I would never be poor, justice would be done and this couldn’t happen.

Then God asked Eve what happened and she blamed the snake even though God had given them control over everything. There were lots of justifications.

Then God sent them out of the garden to do some work, maybe He was trying to correct His babies, maybe He thought, ‘ok, you will suffer, just go a little time out of the garden, do some work so that you can eat but I don’t want you to suffer too long, your suffering will end one day, then come back to me and I’ll give you life again and I’ll protect you somewhere where there is no suffering anymore, where your life will be even better than what you have known before. This is just a matter of being corrected.”

Before they left God gave them animal skins to cover their nakedness. They had already covered themselves with leaves but this wasn’t enough, God had to use the blood of an animal to cover their sin. Today, it’s the same, we try to cover our sins using philosophy or maths or our knowledge or science but God keeps seeing our nakedness through it all.

On the day of the Lord, all the dead will come back to life but God will not listen to any justification anymore as he did for Adam. There will be the judgement. During that time some people, the prophets and those who respected God and belong to Him will receive their reward. Will you be among those people? Do you really know if you belong to Him and to His Kingdom? Do you know if you respect God or not?

What does respect mean? To obey Him and keep His commandments. We have to follow the ten commandments and decide not to sin. Satan will never force us to sin, it’s our decision.

Jesus came down with only one commandment, to love. There are three major things that go together and we need all three for each one to work; love, faith and hope with love being the greatest of them all. If you are unable to have hope or faith, or if the ten commandments are too much, then work on love according to Corinthians and slowly, slowly you will get there.

Revelations 11 (Part 6) The Seventh Trumpet

By Odon Bulamba (7th April 2006) Summary only

“The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small - and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.”
Revelation 11:18-19

Here is the seventh trumpet, the worst of all the trumpets because forgiveness has gone, the Word of God has disappeared, God has stopped listening to our complaints, He has put His grace aside and started to act angrily with authority. When the time comes, at the 7th trumpet, all the nations will start to fear. That fear will come in children as well as adults, it will not be only physical fear but also spiritual fear. Have you already experienced fear in your soul? when the body sees a danger, it fears and will not approach but when the soul fears, suddenly the world is nothing.

When the presence of God will be manifested on that day, before God has even opened His mouth our souls will start fearing, we will fear a danger and look for somewhere to flee. The nations will be overwhelmed with fear even presidents or ministers will fear, they will see their bodyguards shaking. How will they protect them if themselves are in fear?

On the Lord’s day, trees will disappear, mountains will flatten houses and everything will disappear and God will make the world as flat as a wall. And then the sun will come down seven times. It will become seven times closer to the earth and its power will be multiplied by seven. Imagine how hot this is! During that time we will be able to endure 7x the amount of pain so that not only the body will fear but also its pain will increase. Imagine your skin when the sun is 7x closer, it will change colour and burn. All the water in the world will boil and run onto the earth and the earth will become like porridge. Human beings on the earth will try to find somewhere to flee and ask God to kill them because death would be better than this but death will be gone and will not work anymore. People will search for the Word of God but He will not respond and when this time of fear comes, God will manifest His wrath.

On that day God will show human beings how angry He has been since He created them. No one will stop Him. Because of His anger the sun will become darkness and the moon will change colour, we will see signs of blood in it and the earth will start shaking.

When there is an earthquake, the house that is surrounding us, protecting us, can become our enemy when it falls on us and kills us. God is asking us, why do we trust in things that surround us and put Him aside? On the day of His anger, mercy will disappear and if you are a singer, there will be no escape, no death anymore, no mercy anymore but just the end awaiting you. What will you tell God on that day? If you complain or cry, God will not listen or intervene and nobody will come and comfort you saying that this is just for a time, it will pass because it is not.

When God’s anger will be manifested, the dead will be judged. Who are the dead? A dead person is not a dead body. If I die today, people will look at my corpse and know that Odon has gone. Talking about someone’s death is talking about a soul going through sin, “I’m dying” means that your soul is dying not your body and your soul dies when it is attacked by sin. If sin comes into your soul, your soul will die. Dead people (those in sin) still have a chance to come back to resurrection through repentance from their sins but if they don’t want that resurrection and continue to live in darkness, their lives will be different from ours. God doesn’t care about the outward appearance, He looks straight at your soul to see if it’s alive or not and on that day, god will come down to check the dead souls and proclaim judgement on them. Nobody will justify their sins and say, “I did this because of Odon”, God will not listen to you anymore.

Your True Identity

By Odon Bulamba (19th June 2011)

We can’t see the changes in our lives because they happen slowly day after day but other people such as our neighbours or family members or God can see those changes.

Whenever I go overseas, the UN will advise me to change my name and print out a new passport with a new identity and I will now have a new name and new country of birth. Sometimes during that life, someone will come and call me Odon and I will have to keep quiet and sometimes hide my true identity.

1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.”

We should be called children of God and that is what we are. People around us should know we are children of God and not because we wear a tag but people will just know it. None of us here had the right to be called a son of our earthly father; we didn’t do anything to be born to them and it’s the same with God.

Eph 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right”

Eph 1:5-6, “He predestined us for adoption to Sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” We were adopted by Jesus Christ. Regardless of your status, weaknesses or strengths, you are a child of God and without God you won’t be whoever you are. Most of the time we forget who we are and we forget about our appearance.

Zacchaeus was short and climbed a tree in order to get a good view of Jesus. Among the thousands of people who were there, Jesus Christ met with Zacchaeus. Jesus chose a short man who was unfair in his business dealings but Jesus said, ‘regardless of this, He is mine’, and chose to eat with him. For Jesus it was a chance to chat with Zacchaeus. Whenever you are a child of God, God invites you to share food with him.

When you eat your hands are in action without communicating to your body, every system will operate without you even thinking about it. You can talk while eating and you can walk while eating. Sometimes children will refuse to eat certain food even if they are hungry because they don’t like that particular food.

When Jesus invites you, He doesn’t care if you are weak or a sinner or that you don’t deserve it even though we keep making the same mistakes.

Luke 15: the Prodigal Son; The father jumped up when he saw his son and kissed him. Because of the love he had for his son, he said welcome home and shared a meal with him. But before to come back the son said, “I don’t deserve to be a son of my father anymore” and sometimes we also realise that we don’t deserve to be a Christian or to pray or read the Bible and satan uses that tool. Sometimes we decide to leave God and wait for God to come and get us.

Before the son left his father, he was probably a good son, doing good works. The father didn’t forget his son’s deeds and God also doesn’t forget your works and actions.

Mephibosheth was a young man whose grandfather was King Saul and his father was Jonathon who had an agreement with his friend David to be friends forever and to look after each other’s descendents. When David got power, Saul and Jonathon were killed along with all of their family members except Mephibosheth who was only five years old when the nurse looking after him realised that he will be killed also and picked him up and ran but accidently fell and broke both of his legs and he grew up disabled. The nurse continued to hide the baby and where they lived was completely dry. David asked if there are any descendents of Jonathon and one man named Ziba told him about a crippled boy without even mentioning his name.

David invited Mephibosheth to eat with him because of the love he had for Jonathon. Mephibosheth chose not to eat with David because he couldn’t even think he could sit with David. When Saul was alive Mephibosheth had everything but he had lost all his wealth and how much could he have judged his nurse for making him lame. We the church also judge others the same way and sometimes we try to help others but if something goes wrong, they blame us.

Ziba exposed Mephibosheth by telling David about him and put him in serious danger because normally a king would have had the descendents of the previous king killed and how much Mephibosheth could have felt betrayed by Ziba.

Mephibosheth told David, “I’m only a dead dog” and he minimised himself but David said, “no you are one of my sons”. We often feel minimised and say, “I’m a sinner, I’ll try to change” but then we keep going back to the same mistake.

By sitting at the table, no one could see the legs of Mephibosheth and God also doesn’t look at our weaknesses. For example, the parable of the coins; God gave only a few coins but although they were only small, that is all that God needs. There is no small sin; sin is sin and God is ready to forgive us.

After David ate with Mephibosheth, he told him that all that was Saul’s is yours and Ziba was now to be your servant. We don’t have to minimise ourselves no matter what the circumstances, no matter what we see, we are not called to stay in the same situation but to change.

In Israel dogs are not respected and to be called a dog is a humiliation. If you feel like a dog; people don’t respect you and you are less valued. God needs you; God doesn’t see you as a dog but as a child; just be at the table with Jesus. We have to compare what is good in our lives and what is bad and when you see weaknesses, also ask yourself, what is good in me?

God invites you to eat with Him (to go to church, to pray, to read the Word of God), you are not forced but if you don’t go, you’ll miss out on the conversation.

We are all children of God with different identities but some use a false identity. What was the surname of Adam? What was the surname of Moses? What about Jesus? They are all children of God. You are a child of God and that is your family name and we should stick on that family name and the values of that name. God needs you and misses you, even if you don’t miss Him. He needs you to be close to Him, He needs you to kiss Him and hug Him. Come close to Jesus today and eat at His table and have a chat with Him, regardless of your weaknesses, He needs you at the table.

Time is Valuable

To realize
The value of a sister/brother
Ask someone
Who doesn't have one.

To realize
The value of ten years:
Ask a newly
Divorced couple.

To realize
The value of four years:
Ask a graduate.
 To realize
The value of one year:
Ask a student who
Has failed a final exam.

To realize
The value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.

To realize
The value of one month:
Ask a mother
Who has given birth to a premature baby..

To realize
The value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize
The value of one minute:
Ask a person
Who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize
The value of one-second:
Ask a person
Who has survived an accident.

Time waits for no one.
Treasure every moment you have.

You will treasure it even more when
You can share it with someone special.

To realize the value of a friend or family member:
LOSE ONE.