Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Seven Years of Abundance
Genesis 41: Seven Years of Abundance
Presented to Swift Current Corps, 24 July 2011
By Captain Michael Ramsay
One of my daughters collects stuffed and ornamental cows; when she was involved in 4-H, it was the cow programme she was interested in. We have pictures of her with my mom’s cousin’s cows around Tisdale, Sk. So being as we read about Pharaoh’s dream with the fat cows and the skinny cows, I asked her to share some cow jokes with me. She found me one or two. I found a couple more. Here we go:
What do you call a sleeping bull?
(A bull-dozer.)
What could you call a newborn calf?
(A new moo!)
Do cows give milk?
(No, you have to take it from them.)
How would you get a cow in your car?
(You promise to let her steer.)
What is a milking barn full of happy cows called?
(A merry dairy.)
Where do cows go when they want a night out?
(To the moo-vies!)
What did the bored cow say when she got up in the morning?
("It's just an udder day")
What's a cow's favourite musical note?
(Beef-flat)
How did the farmer find his lost cow?
(He tractor down.)
What sound do you hear when you drop a cow?
(Cowboom!)
Why did the bow-legged cowboy get fired?
(Because he couldn't keep his calves together.)
Why are round hay bales not as good for cows?
(Because they need a square meal.)
Did you hear about the cow that couldn't give milk?
(She was an udder failure.)
Why did the cow have a bell around its neck?
(Because its horn didn’t work.)
Knock, knock (Who’s there?)
Cowsgo (Cowsgo who?)
No, silly, cows go ‘moo’
In our story today we are actually addressing a very serious situation. There is about to be a famine throughout the country of Egypt.[1] The government of the day is well aware of it and our text today (Genesis 41) tells us what they are going to do about it.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Catherine Quotes
“Friends, are you more concerned about relieving temporal distress than you are about feeding famished souls? If you are, you may know where you Charity comes from – [hell]” (Papers on Godliness, p 27-28).“All other objects and aims of life [are] subservient to the one grand purpose of preaching the Gospel to every creature and striving to win every soul with whom they come in contact to its salvation” (The Salvation Army in Relation to the Churches, pp 31-32).
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Joseph and the Prosperity Heresy
Joseph’s family life, as we have been discussing, was not the greatest but as one can imagine a terrible home life probably beats being a slave in a foreign country but it is as a slave when it is recorded that, Genesis 39:2, “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.” This is key. This prosperity is not wealth. He is a slave. This prosperity is not luxury. He is a slave. This prosperity is not freedom to do what he wants when he wants. He is a slave. Joseph is a teenager who has been sold into slavery in a foreign country – where I imagine he doesn’t yet even know the language. He is a slave completely against his will without even specified terms for release. This is the condition that he is in when and where it records, Genesis 39:2a, “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.”
Let me tell you some more about this prosperity.[6] While Joseph is a slave, his master’s wife takes a liking to him. She wants to fool around with him a little bit – have an affair. Joseph will have none of this and spends much of his time trying to avoid her. She finally gets so upset at Joe for not giving into her attempts at seduction, that she accuses him of sexual assault and his master has Joseph thrown into prison. This is what it looks like in the house of his Egyptian master when and where it says that the LORD was with Joseph and he prospered.
Joseph is then sitting in prison in a foreign country charged with a crime that he didn’t commit with no specified length or end to his sentence. This prison, while it was reserved for prisoners of important people, was no 21st century Canadian prison (not that these are a picnic by any means) - there is no TV, no Charter of Rights and Freedoms, no early parole; just a dark dungeon, or a pit as some translations (KJV, ESV) refer to it, where you live out your days with the other prisoners. This is what it looks like when, Genesis 39:2a, “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.” This is what his prosperity looked like. No money, no luxury, no freedom, just slavery and then just sitting in a dungeon (or pit) in a foreign country with no hope of parole for a crime he didn’t commit. How many of us would consider this prosperity? I want us to remember this to the next time someone that believes the prosperity heresy tells us that when you are a good Christian you won’t get sick and you will always have all the money and freedom that you want. It is not true. That is NOT what God’s prosperity looks like. What God’s prosperity in our lives looks like is when God’s work is being done through us.[7]
Friday, July 08, 2011
Characteristics of Salvationism
JAC Online, Issue #73
By Commisioner Wesley Harris
AMONG the people of God Salvationists are likely to have certain characteristics. I would mention a few. For one thing they should be visible. In the street where we live my wife and I are known as Salvationists because week by week we are seen in our uniform. Our garb has sacramental significance and gives silent testimony to our creed. Others may keep their faith under wraps and only share it with close neighbours but we are called upon to stand out because we stand up and at the very least let our uniform do the talking.
The visibility of our profession is a privilege and a responsibility. It announces our availability to be of service to any in need. The honour of the movement is on our shoulders. If behind the wheel of a car a uniformed salvationist behaved badly the Army might share the blame just as courtesy on the road could confirm a positive view.
On my travels through the years my uniform has encouraged complete strangers to confide in me and made it possible for me to help in ways that would not have been likely otherwise. Of course, what I have been able to share has needed to be more than ‘uniform deep’ – a living and personal faith, no less.
Then Salvationists are often audible. Through the years some of us have shouted the odds on issues of life and death on beaches and street corners and market places. But there have also been opportunities to speak up for our Lord in an office or factory where it may have been known that we were professing Christians and therefore expected to witness.
Have we sometimes been non-committal or struck dumb? It is said that silence is golden but sometimes it may just be yellow! The psalmist wrote, ‘Let the redeemed of the Lord say so…’ (Psalm 107.2 KJV). It should be in our spiritual DNA that when opportunity arises we will not hold back from speaking a word in season.
Then it should be characteristic of the Slvationist that he or she is credible. There is no doubt that in the early days of our movement some of our forebears were outlandish in their methods. No doubt sedate souls looked askance at some of the means employed to attract attention but they could not but be impressed when drunkards became sober and wife-beaters gentle men.
Holiness was a prescribed part of salvationism so that even critics had to admit that they were Army folk were good people.. Now in some parts of the world we have to pray that we may be at least as good as people have come to think we are for we are all too conscious of our imperfections.
When The Salvation Army is working at its best there is abundant evidence for the credibility of the gospel. It is found in the lives of souls reborn. God is honoured by the lives of his faithful people.
Read more from this issue quickly before the next one comes out: http://www.armybarmy.com/jac.html
Monday, July 04, 2011
Its Not Actually About You...
Devotional Thought presented to Swift Current Corps Staff Meeting on July 04,201. Based on the Sermon, Romans 5:3,4: Hope and an Angel on the Downtown Eastside. Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale on April 20/08 Swift Current Corps on August 09/09 and the article, On the Job Experience, presented to 614 Vancouver Leadership July/04. By Captain Michael Ramsay
As many of you here know when our children were just little (not that they’re so big now), we sold our home and our businesses and moved into North America’s poorest postal code - Vancouver’s downtown eastside - as full-time urban missionaries with The Salvation Army.
We have shared with many of you the excitement from our time there as we saw people who were turned from their addictive, destructive ways of life; transformed into new creations by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was exciting to open up our home and our lives to the miracles that indeed the Lord is still performing today and were, oh, so evident in that environment. We met people who have been cured of cancer, cured of AIDS, and completely cured of diabetes. We have seen and experienced the power of God (cf. Romans 1:4, 1:16, 11:23, 15:13, 15:19-20) first hand.
Our time there, as you can well imagine, wasn’t always rosy though. I remember one day – one morning, I was mugged. I knew better but I wasn’t paying attention. It was early in the morning and I was right on Main and Hastings – the most infamous intersection in this most infamous neighbourhood and I was on the pay phone with Susan who was out of town at the time.
Someone came running up behind me, grabbed my briefcase and tore down Main Street. In the briefcase was my laptop and all the information for the summer school programme I was running for the kids in the area; so, like anyone mugged in the depths of skid row, I’m sure, I…well, I chased the mugger.
I followed him down Main Street through Chinatown across busy streets and around the myriad of mazes that are Vancouver’s back alleys. Scaring rats, jumping over sleeping street folk, I pursued my assailant. When I was within reach of him… I fell right in front of a bus and though I escaped from in front of the bus with my life, the mugger escaped with my briefcase, my laptop, and the programme files for the kids.
It was when I was walking back, completely distraught and despondent from this incident, that I experienced the miracle that happened: I encountered an angel, a messenger of God, in the back alleys of Vancouver’s storied downtown eastside. I can still remember vividly; he looked like a ‘dumpster diver;’ he prayed with me and he offered me these words of encouragement from Romans 5:3,4 “...but let us also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Inside I sighed. I knew he was right. God gave me these words to encourage me.
There was more to come. My life at the time of the mugging; here is a partial list in fast forward:
My foot was injured (which slowed me down as I tried to catch my mugger), I was mugged and had my laptop stolen. My hands were painfully swollen; my eye was injured (painfully enough that I couldn’t even get up for days) and later re-injured; my 2 year-old daughter suffered seizures in front of our eyes, my car stopped working, a person in our home was struggling with heroin addiction, the police visited our home and encouraged a roommate of ours to leave, my in-laws’ computer and camera were stolen on subsequent nights spent in our home along with my wife’s engagement ring and another heirloom...There is more but the important thing is God prepared us for these events that were to come through the comforting words of the angel after the mugging. God emphasized in our life in the next little while: perseverance, obedience, letting the saints pray. We re-learned that it wasn’t all about us and the importance of trusting and fully relying on God.
.
---
http://www.sheepspeak.com/
.
Click here to read Romans 5:3,4: Hope and an Angel on the Downtown Eastside.
.
Click here to read On the Job Experience
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
