“IF YOU CAN’T CHANGE THINGS, CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THEM!”

“Take five for Faith,” was a broadcast called I was listening to in TAK / Thailand. It came from the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) in Manila / Philippines.

It was a five minutes talk on faith. I still remember the name of the speaker.

Today I want to encourage you to take time for prayer, less than five minutes or longer. Why that? Because we are better off.

A.   EVE took from the forbidden fruit.

TANGELOS

You find the story of Eve in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis, but read also what Paul says in Second Corinthians 11:3 in the New Testament.

B.  JUDAS become a traitor and committed suicide.

The story of the Apostle Judas, also called Iscariot, is told in Matthew 10:4 and in Matthew 26:14-56. About his suicide we read in Matthew 27:3-5.

C.  ABSALOM ended his life in a terrible way.

How Absalom got killed is related in Second Samuel chapter 18.

D.  DAVID fell into sin with Bathsheba.

David was not only an adulterer, but he also murdered Uriah. Read that in Second Samuel chapters 11 and 12.

All those people would have been better off, if they would have taken time to make known their plans before the living God in prayer.

What about our plans? Are we taking time and are we making our plans known before the living God in Prayer?

We are better off if we do.

In Second Corinthians 13:14 we are told about “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.”

What a blessing it was this morning when I opened one of my devotional treasuries and read how a pastor is illustrating the doctrine of the Trinity when speaking to young people.

He used the shamrock plant. Those who have seen the plant know that it is but one leaf but it has three distinct sections. Drawing a clover plant on the blackboard, he asks the teenagers, “How many leaves has the plant?” “Three,” most of the listeners answer. But there are some who say, “One.” But most of them yell now, “There are three.”

Then the pastor asks, “How many times do you have to pick, to get hold of the plant?” The answer is, “Once”. He asks once more, “How many leaves?” “One leaf,” comes the reluctant answer from a few students, but others are convinced that there are three.

Eventually one of the young people says, “Three are there in one.”

The word “Trinity” is not mentioned in the Bible.

But the Scriptures teach that there is one God, eternally existing and manifesting Himself to us in three Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

“He who would try to understand the Trinity fully will lose his mind. But he who would deny the Trinity will lose his soul.” – Lindsell and Woodbridge

AT THE BEACH

That you can make the Bible say anything, I remember a teacher saying while attending Bible school.

How do you do that?

You just open up your Bible and pick out some verses. You quote the picked verses out of context and you can construct anything you want.

I looked up The Collins Concise Dictionary and there it says that “CONTEXT” are “the parts of a piece of writing, speech, etc., that precede and follow a word or passage and contribute to its full meaning.”

Just a question here: Have you ever wondered about Devotional Treasuries, where the author picks out one verse and expounds it? At the present time I am reading a Devotional Treasury by C. H. Spurgeon. I have more of course and one is written by Billy Graham.

It shows us how important it is not only to read whole books of the Bible, but all 66 books of the Bible and to read the Bible from cover to cover.

I love hot weather, but it is almost too hot at the present time.

What about “global warming” and the “greenhouse effect”?

Two books I pick up again and again. The two books are the Bible and the Dictionary. ( I have several Bibles and Dictionaries.)

In hot weather a fan helps a bit to cool down

This time it is the Collins English Dictionary I pick up and there I am learning that “global warming” is “an increase in the overall temperature worldwide believed to be caused by the greenhouse effect”.

And what about the “greenhouse effect”? The “greenhouse effect” is “the gradual rise in temperature in the earth’s atmosphere due to heat being absorbed from the sun and being trapped by gases such as carbon dioxide in the air and around the earth.”

But who can tell, if the hot weather at the present time has anything to do with “global warming” and the “greenhouse effect”?

CAPE REINGA

“We who have seen the light of Christ are obliged, by the greatness of the grace that has been given to us, to make known the presence of the Saviour to the ends of the earth … not only by preaching the glad tidings of His coming, but above all by revealing Him in our lives … Every day of our mortal lives must be His manifestation His divine Epiphany, in the world which He created and redeemed.” – Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968)