A Bondservant of Jesus Christ

A  BONDSERVANT OF JESUS CHRIST 

The Apostle Paul often used this expression in his description of himself, for example read the opening sentences of his letter to the church at Rome. Slaves were common to the Roman culture of that day, but their slavery was forced. A bondservant was also a slave to his master, but someone who could have been set free from his forced slavery, but chose to remain as a slave to his master by his own free choice. This is the context in which Paul uses the term. I encourage you to read the first 7 verses carefully and see how well Paul defends the roots of the gospel from the OT by declaring the lineage of Jesus, presents the power of this gospel to change lives, and then challenges his readers to become involved in spreading this gospel of "The Good News" of Jesus Christ! (Rom 1:1-7) 

This is the key to living a victorious spiritual life of following Jesus, we must be bound securely to Him "by love's strong cords", to borrow the word from an old hymn. This means much more than just praying a so-called "sinner's prayer", and claiming to be a Christian. I have met many such people in my day, who think they are followers of Jesus, but don't have a clue as to what is involved on their part! A true follower of Jesus must be able to declare like Paul did in (Gal 2:20), which can only come after obeying his instructions given in (Rom 6:1-11). I believe many people are trying to live a "Christian" life in their own strength, which is impossible. We must die to our own desires and what we believe are our own "rights", and realize that if we are to become "bondservants" to Jesus, we no longer have any of our own rights. As a slave to righteousness, the only right we have is the right to obey the commands of God which are clearly laid out in His Word! That's where a relationship with the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary, as Jesus promised His disciples in the Gospel of John, in chapters 14, 15, and 16. These same promises given to these first followers of Jesus are still available to us today who want to be true followers of Jesus. But the conditions laid out by Paul and the other original apostles are also still valid for today, and must be followed by hearing, and obeying the still small voice of the Spirit!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                               25/04/12                                                                                   

A BLUEPRINT FOR LIFE

A BLUEPRINT FOR  

The daily devotional word for today in ODB was written by Joe Stowell and his closing line was "The Bible is the Christian's blueprint for life", from which I got the idea for this article. As followers of Jesus we all believe the Bible is God's Word from cover to cover, and contains everything He wants us to know in order to live a life that is pleasing to Him. He personally chose the authors of the 66 books that the Bible contains, and His Holy Spirit supplied them with the proper words to use. So in the true sense He, the Holy Spirit, is the real Author of the "Book". (2 Tim 3:16-17). So we can safely depend on the Holy Scriptures to use as a "blueprint" to direct our life. I have found the OT books set the outline, or the basis for our system of "spiritual values" written by men like Moses, King David, or one of the prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah, but NT writers like Paul condense these truths in his letters written to the various churches he had established in the first century. Some of these letters like Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians plus others, make up a good part of the NT, and along with the words of Jesus as recorded in the four gospel accounts, attract most of my 

So I will quote a few passages from some of Paul's letters in the balance of this article. Let us start with (1 Cor 3:10-11) where he speaks about building our lives on the only safe "foundation", which is our Lord Jesus Christ. Then from (Phil 2:3-4) we read some good advice from Paul about valuing others above ourselves by humbly serving them. Then to finish off our blueprint for life we can read from Paul's classic letter to the church at Rome. In (Rom 12:9-21) from my NKJV study Bible, the heading of the section is called "Behave like a Christian". You can take lots of pointers from these verses that will help you to complete your blueprint for living. Such as "be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love", "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse", "If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live at peace with all men", and "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good". Of course we realize that this is only possible as we yield to, and be filled with, the Holy Spirit! (Eph 5:18), If we were to attempt these actions in our own strength we would surely fail. But thank God we know from reading many scriptures that once we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, and Father "adopts" us into His Family, The Spirit is given to us as our faithful Guide and Teacher!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                     09/05/12                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

REBUILDING THE WALL

 We have a very interesting story in the OT book of Nehemiah chapters 3 and 4 about the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. As we know king Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem and taken certain captives to his capital city of Babylon, leaving the walls in ruins. Later when Cyrus became king, one of the first things he did was allow the exiles to return to Israel to rebuild the temple that had been destroyed. Nehemiah was not part of the first group who had responded to the offer of King Cyrus, and had started to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. But when he heard from a relative, who had come back from visiting Jerusalem, and told how bad conditions were there, he wept for days. He was the cupbearer to the present king, who saw how sad he was, and asked what was wrong. When told about the problem, he gave Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem and check things out for himself. Nehemiah was then able to encourage the people to start to rebuild the walls, so they would be protected from their enemies, while they rebuilt the temple.

 In many ways we in Canada in this 21st century are in a similar position as the people were, in the days of Nehemiah! Many of the spiritual walls that used to protect us have been eroded by secular humanism, materialism, multi-cultureism, and other works of our enemy Satan. How and where do we start to rebuild? It seems that since our problems all have a spiritual root, we should be looking to the church for answers, but sad to say, the church is suffering with the same problems. Our chief enemies are identified in (1 John 2:16) as "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life". These enemies lure us away from God and His Word and leave a gap in our protective spiritual walls. In the ODB daily devotional for Jan 31, 2009 the author stated "Let's be alert to what entices us today. A lapse opens the door to sin, which in turn may develop into a habit that overwhelms us. Don't permit a breach in the wall". A careful study of chapters 3 and 4 of Nehemiah could be a proper starting point! Notice the various families rebuilt the section of wall nearest to their home, and there seemed to be perfect unity between them. Then because their enemies opposed them, they had to work with a weapon of defense in one hand, and their working tool in the other. This speaks of our spiritual armor described in (Eph 6:10-18), and the gifts of the Spirit in (1 Cor 12:4-11)!

 As the above quote from ODB states, let's not permit a breach in the wall! This little poem was part of the same devotional

."It may not be some heinous deed

that chills our hearts and chokes the seed;

It's often just a trifling toy

That grabs our eye and steals our joy.---Gustafson

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                           revised 08/07/13

 

 

TWO BEGINNINGS

TWO BEGINNINGS

A few years ago I put together an article called "In the Beginning", since then I have reason to believe that there could be two beginnings, so to speak, mentioned in scripture. The first is in (Gen 1:1) which happened sometime in the prehistoric past, know only to God. (Deut 29:29). The second time it is mentioned is in (John 1:1-5), and I believe this could be considered as the beginning of time as we have come to know it as described from (Gen 1:2) through to (Rev 22:21). It would seem that this period of time started with the reconstruction of planet earth, to make it suitable to sustain life, after it became "without form and void" (NKJV), approximately 6000 years ago as we humans reckon time. I believe our Creator God is perfect, and couldn't have created our planet as it is described in verse two. This would leave a period of undetermined length between verses (Gen 1:1 and 2). I realize there has been much speculation about this apparent gap between the original beginning, and what I'm suggesting might be considered a second 

The facts pertaining to fossils, and the evidence of so-called prehistoric creatures, and the evidence of science that our universe is much older than 6000 years, has always bothered me since becoming a follower of Jesus. I consider myself to be a seeker after truth, since coming to accept Jesus, who is the Truth! (John 14:6). I have recently read a series of articles by a respected Christian leader, in which he attempted to prove that everything mentioned in the Bible has happened in the 6000 year period. Then shortly after reading these articles, and not understanding why he thought he needed to prove the universe could not be older, I read another article by a Christian brother who holds a completely different view. I tend to agree with the latter view, and see no reason why we cannot leave room in our scriptural view for more proven scientific discoveries. I certainly don't believe in the "theory of evolution", or in the belief that there could be life on some other plant, which I consider is simply man's attempt to discredit the Bible. But since the discovery of the Hubble telescope, much more is being revealed about the size and age of God's creation. In (Ps 115:16) NLT we read "The heavens belong to the Lord, but He has given the earth to all humanity." I take from that statement that the earth as we know it was given as the only perfect environment in the universe to sustain human life! Why should we be spending money looking for some other place?

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                                                                           21/04/12