HEAVEN CAME DOWN.....

Matthew 1:21, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”
__________

John W. Peterson is one of the most prolific gospel composers of the 20th century.

Born November 1, 1921, in Lindsborg, Kansas, he served as an Air Force transport pilot during World War II, flying the notorious "China Hump" route over the Himalayas.

Upon returning from duty he enrolled at the Moody Bible Institute, also serving on its radio staff.
In 1953 Peterson graduated from Chicago's American Conservatory of Music, soon after settling in Pennsylvania and launching his songwriting career.

Peterson published in excess of 1,000 contemporary hymns and spirituals, as well as 35 cantatas and musicals.
His most beloved efforts also include "Heaven Came Down," "Jesus Is Coming Again," and "Surely Goodness and Mercy." While at the peak of his compositional prowess, he spent over a decade as president and editor-in-chief of Grand Rapids, Michigan based sacred music publisher Singspiration before relocating to Scottsdale, AZ, and founding his own Good Life Productions.

The recipient of the National Evangelical Film Foundation's 1967 Sacred Music Award, Peterson published his autobiography, The Miracle Goes On, a decade later.
In 1986, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. After battling cancer, Peterson died in Scottsdale, Arizona on September 20, 2006.

I trust you will enjoy this great hymn, and one of my favorites, which speaks about the joy of becoming a child of the King, and entitled:

“Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul”

Oh what a wonderful, wonderful day - day I will never forget;
After I'd wandered in darkness away, Jesus my Saviour I met.
O what a tender, compassionate friend - He met the need of my heart;
Shadows dispelling, With joy I am telling, He made all the darkness depart.

Chorus:

Heaven came down and glory filled my soul,
When at the cross the Saviour made me whole;
My sins were washed away -
And my night was turned to day -
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul!

Born of the Spirit with life from above into God's fam'ly divine,
Justified fully thru Calvary's love, O what a standing is mine!
And the transaction so quickly was made when as a sinner I came,
Took of the offer of grace He did proffer - He saved me, O praise His dear name!

Chorus:

Heaven came down and glory filled my soul,
When at the cross the Saviour made me whole;
My sins were washed away -
And my night was turned to day -
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul!

Now I've a hope that will surely endure after the passing of time;
I have a future in heaven for sure, there in those mansions sublime.
And it's because of that wonderful day when at the cross I believed;
Riches eternal and blessings supernal from His precious hand I received.

Chorus:

Heaven came down and glory filled my soul,
When at the cross the Saviour made me whole;
My sins were washed away -
And my night was turned to day -
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul!
_________
Beautiful....isn't it?
Thanks for that Mikey
bless you....
Yaddy

We don't celebrate thanksgiving....

But.....that does not mean we are not thankful!

These last 12 months have been so different for me.
I am not one to visit doctors or hospitals very much and the last time I did, before all this, was in 1972.

So I am so thankful that I came through all this o.k.

I am grateful that God, in His mercy, saw fit to use me as an example.

Example of what? you might ask?

Well, I am sure there were lots of people who were watching me.....

how is she going to take "this"?


I'll bet she'll complain.....

Physio.....for me???? No way.....( yes I did go to physio, had to)

Met some lovely people on the way....(Who knows God may have put those people there at just the time I happened to be there, so God could use me to be there for them?)

You know what I mean?

I know, during my stay in the hospital, I met a lovely lady who, after a day or so, opened up to me about something that happened in her past, which she had never mentioned to anyone else before.....The Lord knew she would be there....then used me...

(With 20/20 vision hindsight which is wondewrful, I can see that now)

Yep......I am so very thankful,.....'

that the Lord saw fit to use me.......
wonderful isn't it?
Bless you...
Yaddy

OH, Love that wilt not let me go.....

1.O Love, that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.


2.O Light, that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine's blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.


3.O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.


4.O Cross, that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.


John 3 16: FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON.....

Come to Him....now....while there is still time....

Help I’m a Parent!!!!!

We are currently right in the middle of a series on parenting at our Church and this topic is drawing a lot of attention and sparking many conversations with our congregation. It is a touchy subject. It seems like everywhere you turn there is a book, a CD, a DVD, a TV program, someone’s ideas, opinions or a new practice to help parents to raise their children. Yet amongst all of this advice, of parenting material, the younger generation today are known as some of the most self centred, self focused and out of control people to have ever walked the face of planet earth.

So what’s the problem?

A lot of today’s parenting practices aim to deal with the fruit and not the root.

What do I mean by this? The fruit is the behaviour, it is what you actually see, and the root is what is actually causing the behaviour.

If we cannot deal with the root cause..... we cannot deal with the fruit caused.

Dealing with.... and or trying to manage the fruit....just will not do!

I mean....look at a fruit tree.....to try and manage bad fruit, you have to check what is causing it....no use trying to “fix” the fruit.

It needs a more intense check as to why the fruit is not as good as it should be.....if you let it go altogether, you will eventually have to toss the fruit and chop the tree down.

The bible is incredible in so many ways and it also gives us parent’s insight into parenting our children .

If we look at Proverbs 3:11-12 and Hebrews 12:5-6 we can see that God disciplines us because He loves us, because we belong to Him.

The fact that God would discipline us shows, what He actually sees in us......
and that He wants the best for us.

It is the same for us as parents relating to our children. Sometimes the greatest love is shown through discipline. Proverbs 19:18 says discipline your children while there is hope. Otherwise you will ruin their lives. A good working definition of discipline is, correction driven by love.

Discipline is not something you do to your child but something you do for your child.

One of the root causes of poor behaviour is a lack of discipline. Discipline has slowly but surely been removed from society and also from the family home.

The bible tells us in Proverbs 22:6 (NLV) "Bring up a child by teaching him the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn away from it."


Note the use of the word SHOULD. It says the way he should go not the way he wants to, or thinks.... he should go.

As a parent it is our responsibility to set the way that our children should go and it is discipline that assists this process.

Discipline has been replaced by Negotiation. It will not work....why?

A child is not a small adult....a child just does not have the maturity to speak, think and reason as an adult (1 Cor 13:11).

If we replace discipline with negotiation we will end up with an outcome that is part adult and part child, part the way they should go and part the way they think they should go.
Negotiation is also known as reaching a compromise. If we replace discipline with negotiation we raise children who believe that there is always a compromise to be found. This will have a lasting effect on how they do life, relationships, employment and also the way that they relate to God and His church. They grow up compromising their beliefs.

Discipline has been replaced by Redirection.

Techniques like "redirecting the child" are used in childcare centres where they do not have the authority that a parent has.

These are not techniques to be used in the home by a parent, because you are the parent and you do have the authority.

I have heard a parent say that because their children go to school, they will learn discipline at school so they, the parents don’t have to do it....they could not be more wrong!

Redirecting a child from one poor behaviour to the next in place of discipline does nothing to teach the child that that kind of behaviour is unacceptable.

Galatians 5 verses 22 to 24 talk about the fruits of the Spirit and the last one that is mentioned is self control.
Replacing discipline with redirection does not teach the child self control behaviour and will lead to greater self control issues as they get older. We can clearly see the lack of self control in society these days.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Zig Ziglar.
He said, “A child who has not been disciplined with love by his little world will be disciplined without love by the great big world.”

Scott.
thank you Scott...
blessings

Yaddy

You Get Out What You Put In

2012 by scott
Galatians 6:7 “Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant"



Here is a verse that we see used over and over, especially when it comes around tithes and offering time.

There are many verses in the bible that seem to be pigeon-holed to certain topics.....

at the expense of missing the principle, or the bigger picture, within the text.

Sure, we can use this verse to refer to financial giving,..... but there is far more in this verse than just that!

If we place this verse in-between the 6 verses before it, and the 3 verses after it, we can start to see the context that this was written in.

Paul was writing to the church in Galatia about.... “what they are living for, and how what they live for” will determine the outcomes in their lives.

He was talking to them about 'how they are', and we can say, 'how we are,' responsible for our own conduct.

I am often amazed by the height of expectation people place on God.

The question I want to ask is, is our expectation of God larger then our relationship with God?

If we will always “harvest what we plant” or like some other bible translations say, “you will reap what you sow”, the level and depth of relationship we have with God, what we put in, will determine what we get out.

Many Christians feel let down by God when it is actually “their” relationship with God that is letting them down.

You see. the verses after this say......

“those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit”.

If you plant apple seeds you will get apple trees..... no matter “how much” you want oranges.

Before we can place expectation upon God to do His part, we must first build and strengthen our relationship with Him, and do our part, through living a life that pleases the Spirit. If you live according to the Spirit you will reap the rewards of the Spirit.

Let’s not focus our lives on what we expect from God,..... but on a good and healthy relationship with Him and let the expectations take care of themselves.

Bless you Scott

Yaddy

Are you ready????

When Jesus spoke to His followers about His return, He said, “Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect”
(Luke 12:40).

The story has been told of a father who arrived to pick up his son after a church youth meeting. As he drove into the parking lot, he saw his pre-teen son by the exit door completely oblivious to his father’s arrival.

The father decided to see how long it would take his son to look around and discover that he was there.

Twenty minutes went by before the father finally honked the horn to get his son’s attention.

“Where have you been?” his son asked when he got in the car.

“I’ve been sitting right here for 20 minutes,” his dad replied, much to the surprise of the son.

Do you think we’ll be a little like that preoccupied son, when Jesus returns for us?


Oh, we won’t fail to see Him when He comes back.........

He’ll make His presence abundantly clear to us.

But will we be so busy with the details of life that we aren’t looking for Him and preparing for His arrival?

Or are we watching – eager to see Him come? It’s not easy to keep focused on the return of the Lord.

We have so many things to take care of……. that we push Christ’s return to the back of our minds.

If so, “Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober”
(1 Thessalonians 5:6).
To be prepared for Christ’s coming, we need to be actively watching and be ready.

We are to be ready for the last moment by being ready at every moment.

Bless you….
Yaddy

GOD is our refuge and our strength.......

Psalm 46:1-3, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.”


Let’s see. What is the crisis of the day? It could be terrorism and its random threat.

Or maybe the economy and the fear that we will run out of money before we run out of time.
Or it’s a personal crisis with no foreseeable solution – a tragedy or a failure too great to bear.
Before we fall under the weight of our accumulated fears or problems, we would do well to look back to a 20th-century woman who bore sadness, pain, and heartache with grace.

I’m referring to Corrie ten Boom who lived through the hellish life of Nazi concentration camps – a place where hope was lost for most people.I read all of her books and I might add, I read them several times....

She survived to tell her story of unfaltering faith and tight-fisted hope in God her Creator. She saw the face of evil up close and very personal. She saw some of the most inhumane acts man can do to man. When she came out of it all, she said this:
(1) If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed.

(2) If you look within, you’ll be depressed; however,

(3) If you look to Jesus Christ, you’ll be at rest.



Recently.....I read another story of a sergeant.....

He worked at an army motor pool.


It was a dirty, smelly, curse-filled place of trucks and tanks.


One day he decided to add some beauty by planting a few flowers.

He ordered a private to dig out the polluted ground near his office door and replace it with dirt from down the road.

Soon a colourful little flower garden lit up the otherwise dingy motor pool.

Those who followed him, kept the little garden blooming for at least eight years.
The sergeant noted that the flowers did not choose to grow in that dusty place of dirty machines of war, cursing soldiers, and oil-stained soil.
They might have preferred a beautiful flower garden in a fancy park. But instead of complaining, they just went right on blooming.

You see......Instead of allowing the circumstances surrounding their garden to stunt their growth, they grew to their fullest and blessed many soldiers.

The moral of the story???? Well, it is that we may not always choose our circumstances, but we can rise above them.
Instead of giving up when plan A for our lives is destroyed, we should rejoice that God has a plan B that can bring us purpose, meaning, and happiness.
You see......the God that controlled history in Old Testament days, is still the same God who controls the affairs of today.
Wonderful isn't it?

Looking to Jesus, my spirit is blest,

The world is in turmoil; in Him I have rest;

The sea of my life around me may roar,

When I look to Jesus, I hear it no more.
Bless you....

Yaddy