At the end of the day
“At the end of the day”…………..This is a phrase I have heard quite frequently. You have probably heard it too. “At the end of the day”……….What? Or better still: At the end of your life……..What? That phrase came back to me with force today. I had been thinking of course about the end of the day and the end of my own life.

A question: Is your life ending up in a hopeless end or in an endless hope? It does not need to end up in a hopelss end. It can end up in a HOPE without END!

For all those who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ do have an endless hope. What is hope? Hope is desire with expectancy.

Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have confessed their sins. They have come out of darkness into light. They know that they have eternal life. ( First John 5:13 ) The Lord is their Saviour and not their Judge.

At the end of the’ DAY’ they are going to meet up with the Lord Jesus Christ. What a glorious Day that will be.

The desire of believers in Jesus will then be fulfilled and what they expected will have come true. Halleluiah!

Romans 12:12 “Be joyful in HOPE, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

Freedom

Psalm 119:45, ” I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments.”

You are familiar with graffiti. Most of the time I cannot read it. But this time it was different. In big letters was written on the wall:” Take the law off our backs.”

Was that a cry for help? I think it was a cry for freedom.

Many years ago I read in Reader’s Digest and will not forget, what I read.” There is no real freedom without a sense of responsibility.”Who is right? The graffiti man or Reader’s Digest. Let the Bible, the Word of God be the judge. In Psalm 119:45 the psalmist says,” I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments,” And in the same Psalm in verse 32 he cries out,” I run in the paths of your commands, for you have set my heart free.”

So the truth is that there is no freedom without a sense of responsibility. We are responsible to the law of God and we must also be responsible to the law of the land as long as it is not in conflict with the law of God. Then we have real freedom.

Let me conclude with an example. The law of this country dictates that we drive on the left side of the road. What if that was not a law? You can imagine the results. And of course our heart wants to be set free and has to be set free.

When we allow God’s word to be a lamp to our feet and a light for our path it will be set free indeed.

wd

Praying to the Lord
In Psalm 116 it says at the beginning,” I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long a I live.”

The Lord is answering prayers. It says in the Bible “You do not have, because you do not ask.” That is in James 4:2 at the end. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are washed in the blood of the lamb, love the Lord and have a living relationship with him. The Lord is answering our prayers and I personally believe that he is giving us more than we ask for. Just two examples from my own life: I love books. I love writing. From early childhood it was my desire to have to do with books. Selling them etc. I do not know why. The time came during my Bible School Time that I had to sell books almost every evening for a certain time. I sold Bibles and other Christian books. So I did not sell any kind of books but I sold books for the Lord.

I also had the desire to become a teacher in a State School. I never managed to become one. I trained as missionary instead . But the Lord gives us more than we ask for. During my time with the United Maori Mission I did not teach any kind of subject in one school but I was able to teach the Bible in many many Schools in the Mid North of Northland (NZ).

So, let us rejoice.

The Lord is answering our prayers and most of the time he is giving us more than we ask for, because he knows best and better.

wd

Praising the Lord
In Psalm 115:17 it says,” It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to silence; it is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore. Praise the Lord.”

We need to be spiritually alive in order to be able to praise the Lord. Once we have come out of darkness into light, from death into life we cannot but praise the Lord.

When we are praising the Lord, things are going to happen. Remember Paul and Silas in prison in Acts 16? They were singing hymns to the Lord. The other prisoners were listening. There was an earthquake. The prison doors flew open. Praise is the key for those who belong to the Lord. In Second Chronicles 20:22 the people began to sing and praise and the Lord set ambushes.

Long ago I read the following true story:

Two young men fell into the hands of robbers . The robbers took everything and took off leaving them only with a bit of clothing. What would you have done in a situation like that? The 2 men were actually students of the Bible visiting the old parts of Jerusalem a long time ago.

They started to sing the song “A Mighty Fortress is our God….” You may know that is a hymn by Martin Luther, the German reformer, who lived from 1483-1546.

What do you think, happened? The robbers were not too far gone and superstitious. They could not believe their ears and thought the two men were special. In their language they cried holy men holy men. We cannot do this to them. The two got everything back.

Let us also praise the Lord, especially when we don’t feel like doing so. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 150 is the last Psalm and the Psalm starts with “Praise the Lord” and ends with “Praise the Lord.”

And here is some homework for those who want to do it. A question: How many times do you find the word PRAISE in Psalm 150?

wd