As the Orbus Community Centre for Orphan Care moves toward completion we
continue to familiarize ourselves with the local community and try to
ascertain the orphan situation and the needs of these children. We came
across a family of 4 orphaned children living with their grandmother Stella
in a very basic little mud brick hut about 500 metres from the Orbus site in
Kameza village. We enquired as to their situation from neighbours and found
that they were in need of assistance with pre-school fees for the 5 year old
boy and clothing and blankets. There are 4 children: Florence is almost 2,
Archangel is 5, Stephano 10 and Musolini (an unfortunate name) is 13. Their
parents both died of HIV related illnesses almost two years ago, both in the
same year. The mother died during child-birth giving birth to Florence.

Orbus is in a very blessed situation of having an abundance of lovingly
chosen and packed clothes, toys, blankets, towels, toiletries and Christian
childrens books to distribute to orphans here. These goods were donated by
incredibly generous and caring Christians from throughout mostly the
Presbyterian Church of Victoria and sent in the two sea containers received
recently from Australia.

Having obtained the ages of the children we put together a package for each child including clothes, towels, blankets, books, soap and toys and some gifts for the grandmother (including money for Archangels pre-school fees) and had the joy of giving these goods to the family this morning (14-7-10) on behalf of the donors from Australia. They were extremely grateful, stunned even, and Stella requested that we pass on their sincere thanks to the Australian donors. There are some photos attached showing the family surrounded by neighbours looking on.

Additionally, the recent Orbus backpack project in Australia resulted in approx 40 backpacks generously and thoughtfully filled with all sorts of goodies for school-aged children. We distributed the first of these today to Stephano and Musolini. We were able to give Florence and Archangel a trolley case each too which were sent in the containers filled with childrens clothes. We took most of the clothes out and filled them with clothes, toys, jumpers and teddy bears hand-made by caring Christians in Victoria and books.

We have recently also been distributing some of these goods to orphans in
various other villages further away from Ngumbe and will continue to do this
over the coming weeks. We have lots of photos of this distribution work and
if anyone is interested they can email me. Eventually I will hopefully get
some of them on the Orbus website.

The local Ngumbe area Chief, Daniel, and his wife (from Daniel Village in
which our Ngumbe project is located), are coming to the Orbus site this
Saturday and are bringing 10 local orphaned children and their guardians
with them so we can distribute some of these goods to them.

These children are not accustomed to such demonstrations of kindness and
generosity. To be able to do this for them on behalf of the Australians who
have given these goods is a real privilege for us. On behalf of Orbus I
offer sincere thanks for your generosity.

In Christ
Craig

The God of the Universe has chosen to reveal Himself to us. In Jeremiah 9:24 He declares that His people “understand and know Him” – speaking not just knowing about Him, but knowing Him in an intimate relational way

But how well do we know Him?

Isn’t it true that the more we know Him the more we want to know Him? The Christians prayer is to be “increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:10). God desires us to know Him more fully, more accurately and more personally. And so do we.

Perhaps you have read J.I. Packer’s wonderful book, Knowing God. I believe that this book surely ranks as one of those books that people say, ‘It made a lasting impact upon my life.’ This year at SYPC in our monthly Discipleship Seminars (on the last Sunday evening of the month, February to November from 5.30pm) we will be looking at several chapters of Packer’s Knowing God. We will be focusing on his second section under the title ‘Behold Your God’. Hope you can join in.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. – A W Tozer

Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14b-15)

A proper love for God necessarily involves a hatred for sin that leads to repentance. That should be obvious. Who wouldn’t understand that? If we truly love someone we seek their best interests. Their well being is our greatest concern. If a man says to his wife, “I love you but I could care less what happens to you,” we would rightly question his love for her. True love seeks the highest good of its object.

If we say that we love God, then we will hate whatever is an offense to Him. Sin blasphemes God. Sin curses God. Sin seeks to destroy God’s work and His kingdom. Sin killed His Son. So when someone says, “I love God, but I tolerate sin,” then there is every reason to question the genuineness of his love for God. One cannot love God without hating that which is set to destroy Him. True love for God will therefore manifest itself through confession and repentance.

The man who loves God will be grieved over his sin and will want to confess it to God and forsake it.

In examining our faith we should ask: “Do I have a settled conviction concerning the evil of all sin? Does sin appear to me as the evil and bitter thing that it really is? Does conviction of sin increase in me as I walk with Christ? Do I hate it not primarily because it is ruinous to my own soul or because it is an offense to the God I love? Does the sin itself grieve me or am I only grieved over the consequences of my sin. What grieves me most-my misfortune or my sin? Do my sins appear to me as many, frequent and aggravated? Do I find myself grieved over my own sin more than the sins of others?”

Genuine saving faith loves God and hates what He hates, which is sin. That attitude results in real repentance.

– John MacArthur Jnr

(Author Unknown or is it? Please. Read on.)

I sat, with two friends, in the picture window of a quaint restaurant just off the corner of the town-square. The food and the company were both especially good that day.

As we talked, my attention was drawn outside, across the street. There, walking into town, was a man who appeared to be carrying all his worldly goods on his back. He was carrying, a well-worn sign that read, ‘I will work for food.’ My heart sank.

I brought him to the attention of my friends and noticed that others around us had stopped eating to focus on him. Heads moved in a mixture of sadness and disbelief.

We continued with our meal, but his image lingered in my mind. We finished our meal and went our separate ways. I had errands to do and quickly set out to accomplish them. I glanced toward the town square, looking somewhat halfheartedly for the strange visitor. I was fearful, knowing that seeing him again would call some response. I drove through town and saw nothing of him. I made some purchases at a store and got back in my car.
Deep within me, the Spirit of God kept speaking to me: ‘Don’t go back to the office until you’ve at least driven once more around the square.’

Then with some hesitancy, I headed back into town. As I turned the square’s third corner, I saw him. He was standing on the steps of the store front church, going through his sack.
I stopped and looked; feeling both compelled to speak to him, yet wanting to drive on. The empty parking space on the corner seemed to be a sign from God: an invitation to park. I pulled in, got out and approached the town’s newest visitor.

‘Looking for the pastor?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ he replied, ‘just resting.’
‘Have you eaten today?’

‘Oh, I ate something early this morning.’

‘Would you like to have lunch with me?’

‘Do you have some work I could do for you?’

‘No work,’ I replied ‘I commute here to work from the city, but I would like to take you to lunch.’

‘Sure,’ he replied with a mile.

As he began to gather his things, I asked some surface questions. Where you headed?’

‘ St. Louis ‘

‘Where you from?’

‘Oh, all over; mostly Florida ..’

‘How long you been walking?’

‘Fourteen years,’ came the reply.

I knew I had met someone unusual. We sat across from each other in the same restaurant I had left earlier. His face was weathered slightly beyond his 38 years. His eyes were dark yet clear, and he spoke with an eloquence and articulation that was startling. He removed his jacket to reveal a bright red T-shirt that said, ‘Jesus is The Never Ending Story.’

Then Daniel’s story began to unfold. He had seen rough times early in life. He’d made some wrong choices and reaped the consequences.. Fourteen years earlier, while backpacking across the country, he had stopped on the beach in Daytona.. He tried to hire on with some men who were putting up a large tent and some equipment. A concert, he thought.

He was hired, but the tent would not house a concert but revival services, and in those services he saw life more clearly. He gave his life over to God .

‘Nothing’s been the same since,’ he said, ‘I felt the Lord telling me to keep walking, and so I did, some 14 years now.’

‘Ever think of stopping?’ I asked.

‘Oh, once in a while, when it seems to get the best of me But God has given me this calling. I give out Bibles That’s what’s in my sack. I work to buy food and Bibles, and I give them out when His Spirit leads.’

I sat amazed. My homeless friend was not homeless. He was on a mission and lived this way by choice.. The question burned inside for a moment and then I asked: ‘What’s it like?’

‘What?’

‘To walk into a town carrying all your things on your back and to show your sign?’

‘Oh, it was humiliating at first. People would stare and make comments. Once someone tossed a piece of half-eaten bread and made a gesture that certainly didn’t make me feel welcome. But then it became humbling to realize that God was using me to touch lives and change people’s concepts of other folks like me.’
My concept was changing, too. We finished our dessert and gathered his things. Just outside the door, he paused He turned to me and said, ‘Come Ye blessed of my Father and inherit the kingdom I’ve prepared for you. For when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, a stranger and you took me in.’

I felt as if we were on holy ground.. ‘Could you use another Bible?’ I asked.

He said he preferred a certain translation. It traveled well and was not too heavy. It was also his personal favorite.. ‘I’ve read through it 14 times,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure we’ve got one of those, but let’s stop by our church and see’ I was able to find my new friend a Bible that would do well, and he seemed very grateful.
‘Where are you headed from here?’ I asked.
‘Well, I found this little map on the back of this amusement park coupon.’

‘Are you hoping to hire on there for awhile?’

‘No, I just figure I should go there. I figure someone under that star right there needs a Bible, so that’s where I’m going next.’

He smiled, and the warmth of his spirit radiated the sincerity of his mission. I drove him back to the town-square where we’d met two hours earlier, and as we drove, it started raining. We parked and unloaded his things.
‘Would you sign my autograph book?’ he asked.. ‘I like to keep messages from folks I meet.’
I wrote in his little book that his commitment to his calling had touched my life. I encouraged him to stay strong. And I left him with a verse of scripture from Jeremiah, ‘I know the plans I have for you, declared the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you; Plans to give you a future and a hope.’
‘Thanks, man,’ he said. ‘I know we just met and we’re really just strangers, but I love you.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘I love you, too.’ ‘The Lord is good!’

‘Yes, He is. How long has it been since someone hugged you?’ I asked.

A long time,’ he replied .
And so on the busy street corner in the drizzling rain, my new friend and I embraced, and I felt deep inside that I had been changed.. He put his things on his back, smiled his winning smile and said, ‘See you in the New Jerusalem.’

‘I’ll be there!’ was my reply.

He began his journey again. He headed away with his sign dangling from his bedroll and pack of Bibles. He stopped, turned and said, ‘When you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?’
‘You bet,’ I shouted back, ‘God bless.’
‘God bless.’ And that was the last I saw of him.
Late that evening as I left my office, the wind blew strong. The cold front had settled hard upon the town. I bundled up and hurried to my car. As I sat back and reached for the emergency brake, I saw them…. a pair of well-worn brown work gloves neatly laid over the length of the handle. I picked them up and thought of my friend and wondered if his hands would stay warm that night without them.
Then I remembered his words: ‘If you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?’
Today his gloves lie on my desk in my office.. They help me to see the world and its people in a new way, and they help me remember those two hours with my unique friend and to pray for his ministry. ‘See you in the New Jerusalem,’ he said. Yes, Daniel, I know I will…

How would you like that on your tombstone, or for those in the modern techno-age as your Facebook ‘Status’?

Obadiah’s status for all eternity is that he “feared the Lord greatly”.

Sure, the context shows that he was not immune from fear of man, but the point is that the dominant note of his life was that he feared the Lord.

This fear of course is not a dread or terror. Wilhelmus A’Brakel says, ‘Such fear is a holy inclination of the heart, generated by God in the hearts of His children, whereby they, out of reverence for God, take careful pains not to displease God, and earnestly endeavour to please Him in all things.’

This fear is a reverence that dreads to offend God and that longs to please God. It is reverence grounded in faith, love and hope. It is reverence that is born on the wings of thankfulness.

It is what David expresses in Psalm 5:7 “I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy; in fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple.”

This is how we are to worship God; this is how we are to serve God. It gives confidence without diminishing humility; it gives joy without diminishing reverence.

It was this fear of the Lord that enabled Obadiah to remain faithful in a time of widespread apostasy, and to be enterprising in supporting the Lord’s Word and work in a time when the public policy was to kill the prophets of God.

Neither difficulty nor danger made him swerve from his faith in the Lord, and this was the key: he feared the Lord greatly.

A right view of God’s majesty and a thankfulness of His goodness is what we need to be faithful to the Lord and energetic for the Lord in our everyday life, regardless of the circumstances we may find ourselves in. Here is both the motivation and anchor for Christian living.

May God grant us fresh views of His glorious majesty that demolish our self-confidences and transcend our daily fears and inadequacies, while also reminding us of the abundance of His goodness as summed up in the title He has given us to call Him, “our Father who art in heaven”.

It can be little things or big things. Maybe it’s a bunch of flowers when it’s not your birthday or Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s a surprise birthday party, or a visit from someone you haven’t seen for ages. Maybe it’s the boss calling you into his office and giving you a bonus – now, you’re thinking, that would be a surprise! Sometimes they are not immediately pleasant.

God is full of surprises – even with God’s prophetic information who would have thought that the eternal Son of God would be born in humble circumstances of a Bethlehem stable, or die the death of the cursed on Calvary’s cross? Even the disciples were thinking of Christ eventually breaking free from His relative anonymity and setting up a kingdom that not only rivalled the kingdoms of the world like that of Rome but far greatly surpassed them. They were surprised at His news that He would save people and secure His spiritual kingdom through His death for them.

The record of Elijah is full of surprises and the unexpected. There are his sudden appearances, and equally sudden disappearances – and we meet one of them in this morning’s pas-sage from God’s Word.

Just when things were starting up for the renewal of the worship of God, as God’s prophet speaks into the wickedness of the times, he is told to leave. Not just told to leave what he

had started, but to leave it all behind. He was to disappear, go to a remote place and live in complete isolation from all human contact.

What is God up to? What relevance does it have to our lives? That’s what we will be looking at as we return to the life and ministry of Elijah. Here we will see and be challenged by the fact that his exit to the Brook Cherith is an act of judgement, an act of dependence, an act of preparation, and an act of faith.

This is not only using comparison to camouflage a sinful heart full of fear, or indolence, etc. It is also illogical nonsense. I say illogical for it assumes firstly that they are different to you, and secondly it is that difference that makes the difference.

What we learn from Elijah is that he was no different than us ‘ordinary man’ — a man “with a nature like ours” (James 5:17); and that what really made the difference was God’s grace.

When we say we cannot do something that other believers in the past or around us are doing we are failing to realize why it is that these others were able to do it, and we are failing to give God the glory that is His due for enabling them to do it.

Paul got it right when he said with reference to contentment with lack as well as plenty, “I can do all things because of Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).

Do you face a challenge at work or school? Is there a burden you are being called to carry? Is there an area of your life you are being called to get right and keep right before God? Is there a Christian discipline like praying, Bible reading, witnessing or even worship that you struggle to keep active? Is there an area of ministry God is calling you to be a part of — but in any or all of which you feel total inadequacy? The answer remains Christ.

Today we look at Elijah the man of God … and what do we see? A man like you and me, an ordinary man, but one who believed in and loved God, and whom God blessed and used mightily.

May God bless this to encourage us as ‘ordinary’ believers, but also to in turn become a blessing to other ^‘ordinary’ believers like you and me.

“Every blessing that comes from God is sent with the same message, ‘And more to follow.’ ‘I forgive you your sins, but there’s more to follow.’ ‘I justify you in the righteousness of Christ, but there’s more to follow.’ ‘I adopt you into my family, but there’s more to follow.’ ‘I educated you for heaven, but there’s more to follow.’ ‘I give you grace upon grace, but there’s more to follow.’ ‘I have helped you even to old age, but there’s still more to follow.’ ‘I will uphold you in the hour of death, and as you are passing into the world of spirits, my mercy shall still continue with you, and when you land in the world to come there shall still be more to follow.’”

A blessed person is one who has experienced God’s favour (blessing) and therefore has a deep sense of well-being, even as they live life in this fallen world and sometimes deal with its harshest realities.

Blessing – it is the Lord’s delight to do not merely to be. This morning in Psalm 128 we read that the Lord blesses His people, but also of the context where we the blessings will come.

These are covenant blessings… not secured by our actions, but by the action of He who made the covenant with us; and yet we will not enjoy these blessings without being the people family here described.

May God bless this psalm not only to the parents who present their child for baptism this morning, but to each of us through Jesus Christ the Lord.

Yet we do not always do this, do we. Or if we feel we must we often temper what we say. Why?

“However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews” (John 7:13). “Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” (John 12:42-43).

Are we any different today? Is the pressure against us greater? Are you sure?

In this morning’s message we will be looking at saying no to fear by saying yes to fear.

How do we overcome this fear of what others may think, say or do? Jesus answer seems contradictory: by “the fear of God”. This is the only antidote – but it is a different fear. The first fear speaks of terror, this fear speaks of reverence. The first speaks of threat, this speaks of love. That’s why the Apostle John says “perfect love casts our fear” (1 John 4:18).  The love he is talking about is reverence for who God is and gratitude for what God does.

Is it hard to openly talk about Jesus? Yes, if we only look at the reaction real or potential that it might arouse; but ‘No’ if you think of the glory, grace and love of God for you. Their animosity, even at its worst is limited, but God’s power knows no limit – indeed it is exercised with loving interest and comes with wondrous promises for His people who confess His Son before men. This pushes aside the fear of man.

Let us ask God to not only show us how to maintain a faithful confession of Jesus, but to do so.

One of the jokes that keeps doing the rounds of the Internet relates to a lady going to a motor spares shop and asking for a ‘710’ cap. This of course left the salesman bemused and confused until she showed him where it was supposed to be. The joke comes with a graphic which shows that it was an OIL cap – she was reading it upside down.

Sadly when it comes to forgiveness in the church many don’t seem to know any more than this mythical lady.

Yet the Bible has a great deal to say about forgiveness, speaking of God’s forgiveness – both providing the means of forgiveness through the death of His Son for our sin, of drawing us to faith in His Son to receive this forgiveness, and of assuring of His ongoing commitment to forgive His children.

But what does it mean when things get difficult between us as people? The Bible calls us to “forgive one another just as Christ forgave us” (Ephesians 4:32).

Today’s message explores the Bible’s teaching on forgiveness in our relationships, drawing out its need, it’s essential nature as a promise, and practical help for when we find ourselves in those situations we are sinned against.

In being dealt with by God’s Word today, ask: How’s the oil-level with me? Is there someone I need to forgive, or to go and talk to, whom I have been avoiding because of what they did (or I thought they did)?  Is there someone you have held forgiveness from? Indeed is there someone I need to repent to and ask forgiveness of? Then ask “Will you forgive me?”