hope Archives - Colin Dye

Her name was Amanda Todd…

Colin Dye — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:06:00 +0000

Tributes from across the world are being paid to a 15-year-old girl from Canada who killed herself after being bullied online.

Tributes from across the world are being paid to a 15-year-old girl from Canada who killed herself after being bullied online. Her name was Amanda Todd.

A memorial for Amanda Todd was held overnight in British Columbia, five days after she was found dead. It comes just five weeks after she uploaded a video to YouTube describing years of bullying that drove her to drugs and alcohol.
In the nine minute video she told her story with a set of handwritten notes. The recording, described as “haunting”, showed the cheerleader going into detail about what happened to her.
She said she was persuaded to expose her breasts to a stranger who then sent the photo to her school friends.
‘I need someone’
These images were then used to torment her on social media, she adds. The teenager changed schools repeatedly but this did not stop the bullying and she was physically attacked by classmates.

After a violent encounter with another girl, she wrote that she went home and drank bleach. “It killed me inside and I thought I actually was going to die.”
The last card on the YouTube video reads: “I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”

Link to the video? [warning-contains graphic images]

Deeply troubling. Her last words; “I have nobody…I need someone.” We can’t help but thinking that this tragedy could have been avoided. Brothers, sisters, pray for those around you and love them. This world is hurting. Many feel unloved and lonely..tell them that Jesus loves them and show them His love…

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” 1Peter 3.15

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Cornerstone Faith

Colin Dye — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:16:58 +0000

The ultimate hope for the Christian believer is the resurrection from the dead. This resurrection will bring about the new life of the kingdom of God ? life in all its fullness.

Christ is the Cornerstone of our Faith

All the suffering, pain and hurt of the old creation will be left behind and we will enjoy the full blessings of the new creation. This is our certain hope and not just a nice idea. The resurrection of Christ as a fact of history is the cornerstone of our faith. When God raised Jesus from the dead it proved that His sacrifice on the cross was accepted by God and that Jesus was everything He claimed to be.

Key Thought

Your Christian faith is based on facts ? real, physical and historical facts. This gives you an unshakeable confidence that your life is secure in the Bible beliefs you have received, and that your present imperfect experience of God will one day give way to the fullness of resurrection life.

Prayer

Dear Lord, help me to rest on the secure foundation of resurrection faith. Help me to stand the tests of my own imperfections and be confident in the saving promises of your Word.

Discipleship Steps

Your faith is real. Jesus really came, He really died and He was really raised from the dead. Your faith is not make-believe but is based on unalterable truth and reality. Therefore your discipleship must also be real and not just following a few nice religious thoughts out of personal preference which don?t really matter in the end. The exact opposite is the case. Think what difference will this make in the way you live your life today.

Read: 1 Corinthians 15:12-28

Jesus You are my firm foundation! Declare it today!

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Hope-filled Living

Colin Dye — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:44:53 +0000

The basis of all our hope is Christ and what He has achieved for us on the cross. This hope is a living hope because Jesus is risen from the dead. We have been declared righteous by faith and we have peace with God. We now have free access into all the provisions of God?s grace and power.

We can rejoice in every condition and circumstance of life because we have a hope that can never fail.

We can rejoice in every condition and circumstance of life because we have a hope that can never fail. Negative experiences only serve to develop our character and our ability to hope. And, in the meantime, we have the Holy Spirit?s blessing and the experience of God?s love poured out into our hearts.

Read: Romans 5:1-5

Hope is founded on our justification by faith through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. You have confidence to face every circumstance as you look forward to God?s promise for the future. This lifestyle comes from a real relationship with God?s Spirit and not mere concepts or ideas.

Prayer

Lord, I thank you that you have taken care of my past, my present and my future. I put my confidence in your promise of all that is to come and refuse every temptation to doubt or be afraid.

Discipleship Steps

God?s promises are perfect and unchangeable. But they can only operate as you let God work out His purposes in you. Because God has taken care of the past you can have confidence in the future. And your present experience of Christ will enrich you day by day and give you courage to make the right decisions. There is no short cut to character development but God is developing you as you walk in patience and perseverance.
Rejoice in the Lord always!

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Hope for the unhealed

Colin Dye — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:04:49 +0000

We have seen that Jesus healed everybody who came to Him requesting healing and that He cured all those to whom the Father sent Him. But the rest of the New Testament is not a record of unbroken success. There are at least four references which may imply either unsuccessful or unattempted ministry for healing.

Disappointment is bound, at times, to face those of us who commit ourselves to the ministry of healing. There will be some people who are not healed, others whose initial healing lapses and a few who are half healed and then make no further progress. There are many questions about this puzzle and few answers in this life.

In 2 Timothy 4:20, Paul sadly records, ?But Trophimus I have left in Miletus sick.? (Trophimus the Ephesian is mentioned twice in Acts as a trusted travelling companion of Paul). In 1 Timothy 5:23, Paul does not instruct his prot?g? Timothy to pray or have hands laid on him. Instead he urges him to ?no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach?s sake and your frequent infirmities.? Paul may have been writing about a personal ailment in Galatians 4:13-14, ?You know that because of physical infirmity I preached the gospel to you at the first. And my trial which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject.? Finally, in Philippians 2:27, Paul records that the messenger Epaphroditus, ?was sick almost unto death; but God had mercy on him.? Does this mean that Epaphroditus was miraculously healed, or is a slow, natural recovery a more likely explanation?
It is interesting to note that these four sick men were all servants of God and that Paul does not record any reason for their lack of healing. Their stories should be some small solace to us when we are faced with similar situations.
Disappointment is bound, at times, to face those of us who commit ourselves to the ministry of healing. There will be some people who are not healed, others whose initial healing lapses and a few who are half healed and then make no further progress. There are many questions about this puzzle and few answers in this life.
Sometimes, as I have suggested, the cure of our pride will be higher on God?s agenda than the healing of the person?s disease. In other instances, we will mishear God. There are bound to be a few occasions when we act out of human enthusiasm or because of worldly pressure. And there will be times when we have not prayed enough or have been distracted by materialism or unnecessary worries.
We might have been ambitious, impatient or fascinated by spiritual phenomena. We might have been concerned to stay safe in a narrow tradition or have experimented with unbiblical matters. We might have given up after a setback, exaggerated with false claims or, worst of all, we might have blamed the sick person for the failure and have pretended that sin or lack of faith was the reason for the disappointment. Blame God, if you must. Blame the devil, if that is what you really believe. Blame yourself, if you have to. But never, ever blame the sick person.
All too often, believers who are involved in the healing ministry imply, either by innuendo or silence or because they are embarrassed, that the failure is somehow the responsibility of the one they have prayed for rather than theirs. They hint that the person did not have enough faith or was perhaps a little bit rebellious, or maybe did not really want to be completely healed. All of these are theoretical possibilities, but they are rarely the truth.
In one sense, it can never be right to say that nothing has happened. With God nothing is impossible, so if we have spoken His words, radiated His love and performed His actions, something must have taken place. The gifts of our time and attention, our words and gestures, our prayers and practical caring all have healing value. This does not ignore the question of why physical healing has not taken place, rather, it negates the pretence that nothing has happened.
Sometimes, as with many of the Old Testament stories we examined in Part Two, the appreciation of the healing is delayed. At other times, the actual healing is gradual, as with Naaman, the Shunammite?s son, and the blind man in Mark 8. In cases like these there is no scriptural authority for suggesting that people should be urged to ?believe? God for a fuller healing than they are actually experiencing. The participants in these stories were not urged to intensify or quicken the healing by praise or belief. They were simply asked to obey God.
?Believism? is pretending, or trying to believe, that we are healed. Real faith is something quite different. Matthew 13:58 informs us that Jesus did not work many miracles in Nazareth because of the general lack of faith, but it does not say that He tried to work miracles and failed. The Scriptures do suggest that Jesus found the presence of faith in some people to be quite remarkable. There is no record, however, that Christ ever informed people that they could not be healed because they lacked faith or belief, though He did explain to the disciples that their lack of faith was preventing a boy from being healed.
The mere fact that a person comes to Christ requesting healing demonstrates faith. We do not need to imagine the person into being cured or even to be thoroughly convinced ourselves that healing will take place, or to urge anyone to manufacture healing through spiritual willpower. We are only called to speak God?s words, to perform His actions and to be full of his overwhelming willingness to heal.
The truth is that people are sometimes not healed when we are absolutely certain that they will be and that they may be healed when we are full of doubt and uncertainty. Unfortunately, we can never eliminate some degree of mystery from divine healing!
Some people turn to the Christian healing ministry only when a loved one is dying and then see death as a failure. But, for believers, death is always the full and perfect healing and those who are involved in this ministry must have an adequate theology of death. We must celebrate the fact that Christ is as active in our dying as He is in healing and that there can be miraculous deaths as well as wonderful cures!
In the early chapters of Part Three, we thought about the fulfilment of healing, the total transformation which will take place at the day of resurrection. We saw that, somehow, we need to find the right balance between insisting that God does heal today and pointing people to the promised healing still to come. This means that we can look sick believers straight in the eye and promise them that they will be wonderfully healed. We can issue them with an unconditional guarantee that their pain and suffering will cease and that their broken body will be transformed. We do not always know when they will be healed, but we know that they will be.
In Christ, there is unlimited hope for healing, both now and in the future, and we need to encourage people to embrace every element of divine healing. They might not be healed now in the way that they hope, but they can be certain that in Christ and because of the cross, they will be.
We must, however, be careful how we urge people to receive God?s healing. There are many disabled people today who avoid Pentecostal and charismatic churches because of the insensitive treatment that they have received. I know that the Bible refers to ?the blind?, ?the deaf? and ?the lame?, but it is completely unacceptable for us today to personify people by their disabilities in this way.
It is just not good enough for Christians to be eager to pray for people in wheelchairs but unwilling to install the slopes and special facilities they need. If our ministry of healing means that we genuinely care for ?the disabled?, we will get involved in disability issues. We will help them on their terms and in the way that they seek; we will not presume that we know what they need or want. Some disabled groups campaign outside Christian healing meetings under the slogan, ?Rights, not miracles?. I often want to stand with them and hold up a banner proclaiming, ?Rights and miracles?!
Some believers seem to be in greater need of emotional healing than the disabled are of physical healing and we need to have a healing attitude which does not make people feel conspicuous, uncomfortable or unaccepted in their disability. We should not automatically assume that they are aching for physical healing or that they lead lives which are unfulfilled. Please remember that a person who is physically or mentally handicapped is as much in God?s image as a talented gymnast or a gifted dancer. We must respect each person?s individual humanity and value the special contribution each person can make, but we must also sensitively encourage everyone to look to the loving hands of Yahweh Rapha.
It would be easy? to give the impression that every person I have ever prayed for has always been instantly healed or that the healing ministry at Kensington Temple is the greatest thing since the book of Acts. God has been gracious and I have seen Him work in quite wonderful ways, but I always return home and weep about the multitude of sick folk who have not received their healing. By writing about my daughter, I have tried to show that my partnership with God is rooted in pain and I know what it is to endure the daily domestic struggle with the practical issues of disability and hardship. I know what it feels like to face disappointment and to be bewildered by God?s sovereignty.
So it is from my experience in the whole area of helping the unhealed that I make the following suggestions of things that we can say and do when, after much ministry, an expected cure has still not taken place. As with the other suggestions I have made, please do not follow these slavishly, ask the Spirit to shape them to your own situation.

Hope in the midst of trials. God is our anchor.

1. Have a prayerful de-briefing with your team and go through the steps you took in ministry. Try and find out whether you were obedient to every prompting. Establish if you made any mistakes or omissions.
2. Talk and pray about the whole matter with somebody who is more experienced than you in the healing ministry and ask for suggestions. If anything emerges from the process of de-briefing and seeking advice, arrange to see the person you ministered to again.
3. Pray and fast for guidance on your own. Ask God why the person was not healed.
4. Praise God with the person for the time of fellowship and prayer that you spent together. Point out that they are no worse off than before the prayer and help them to appreciate the care and love of the people around. Remind them that the healing God is with them and cares for them.
5. Establish one thing that you have learnt from the episode and explain it to the person. Find out what the sick person learnt through the ministry and praise God together for the insight. If other people were healed, encourage the person to praise God for the healings instead of wondering why they were not healed.
6. If the person you were ministering to is a Christian, encourage them to join you, or somebody else, in healing prayer for others. Point out that Elijah was healed of his depression by carrying out the three tasks he was given to perform.
7. Remind yourself that you are part of a battle, that the enemy is implacably opposed to healing, but that he has been defeated on the cross and will be destroyed at the last day.
8. Make sure that neither you nor the person feels guilty about the lack of healing. Explain that God?s priority is often to prune the healing partner?s reputation and pride and laugh together about this.
9. Remind the person that Jesus? main purpose in supernatural healing is to point people to the reality of the kingdom rather than to give them a few more healthy years on earth. Show that Jesus does care about our bodies, but that He is more concerned about our eternal health and our full salvation. Encourage the person to take one more step towards God.
10. Send a short note thanking the sick person for giving the time, promising your continued prayers for healing and suggesting something helpful to read from the Scriptures. Encourage the person to meditate on God?s biblical healing promises and to apply them.
Some people, especially new Christians, do not know how to handle biblical promises and it may be useful to indicate a way of applying God?s words. For example, a man suffering from, say, asthma, could use Matthew 8:2- 3 in the following way.
He could be asked to sit quietly and to read the simple story several times. He could then be encouraged to imagine the scene and to ?see? the leper coming to Jesus and being cleansed. Next, he could personalise the story by applying it to himself in this way: ?And behold, I came and worshipped Jesus, saying, ?Lord, if you are willing, you can make me whole.? Then Jesus put out his hand and touched me, saying, ?I am willing, be made whole.? And immediately my asthma was healed.? Finally, he can thank Yahweh Rapha for being with him and for guaranteeing his healing. This is, however, only one way of personalising God?s Word and it is not a healing technique.
The Bible is packed with promises and we can help people to apply all of them in a similar way. The references to many of these were given in Part Two, but we can also encourage people to use some of these verses:

Exodus 15:26
Deuteronomy 5:33, 7:15
2 Chronicles 30:20
Job 5:26
Psalm 23:1-2, 34:19-20, 41:3, 91:10-16, 103:1-3, 107:20, 116:8, 145:14, 146:8, 147:3
Proverbs 3:7-10, 4:20-23, 9:10-11, 16:24, 17:22
Isaiah 32:3, 35:5, 40:31, 41:10, 53:4-5, 58:8
Jeremiah 17:14, 30:17
Ezekiel 16:6
Hosea 13:14
Matthew 10:1, 11:4-5
Romans 8:11, 32
1 Thessalonians 5:23
2 Timothy 1:7
Hebrews 12:12-13, 13:8
1 John 3:8
3 John 1:2
Revelation 22:1-4

Although we should urge people to go on praying for their healing and to go on claiming God?s promises for healing, we should not neglect to remind them to be hungrier for the Healer than for their healing. We have to recognise that, ultimately, healing is not the great hope of the unhealed, Jesus is. In the middle of all our pain and problems, all our disappointments and difficulties, our only hope of inner peace and contentment is to keep our attention tightly focused on Jesus and on His overwhelming love for us. He is the only rock which will stand when everything else collapses around us.
If we are preoccupied with healing, we will never be whole and we will never know peace. But if our goal is God Himself, we will find that Yahweh Rapha soon embraces us in His gentle healing arms.

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Your time will come!

Colin Dye — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:00:09 +0000

Lamentations 3:24 – “The LORD is my portion,? says my soul, therefore I hope in Him!?
My friends, the Lord is YOUR portion, so hope in the Lord, and your time will come!

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The Ministry of Encouragement

Colin Dye — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:21:45 +0000

The ministry of encouragement-connected to one another.

Of all the ministries God has given us encouragement is closest to his heart. God is the great encourager. He gives hope to the dispirited, healing to the broken-hearted and joy to those who mourn. Encouraging one another is one of the most godly things we can ever do. And, what?s more, we are all called to do it.
?“Home on the Range” is the official song of the American state of Kansas. Originally a poem, it was set to music and adopted by 19^th Century settlers, cowboys and others seeking the American dream. The song begins:

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
And the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

The opening line was for them an idyllic vision of security and contentment.? To us second-decade-twenty-first-century urban London dwellers, the song is beyond the idyllic, bordering on the ridiculous. For us, buffalos, antelopes and cloudless skies are rare sights indeed.
But we cannot afford to ignore the third line in the first verse. In fact, we must take it and make it the gold standard of all our communication. Imagine a church community where every person was strongly-motivated and highly-skilled at encouraging fellow followers of Christ. Just think what it would be like if we all put aside pointless criticism, negative talking and fruitless fault finding. Imagine a people who are passionate about lifting others up and directing them toward the One who is the fountain of all that is good and true. That is Jesus? vision for his church. We are called to be competent encouragers of others.
All too often, the reality is very different. Hiding behind our layers of self-protection, we develop strategies to project an image of who we want others to believe we are. We hide what is really happening inside us because we are too fearful to let anyone know. We think we will be accused and judged. So we engage in superficial conversation and hope that we make it through.
Superficial relationships
True Christian fellowship involves something deeper, more meaningful and more helpful than that. It goes beyond the standard Sunday conversation, ?Hi! How are you??. ?Fine thanks!? (I?m not fine really, but I would never let on to you. There?s no telling what you?ll do with that information). When we have been criticised, talked about behind our back, and been the subject of mindless, yet hurtful gossip, we wonder who we can trust. It is important that we abandon all negative, destructive communication and begin to act in line with our identity and calling in Christ ? as fellow members of the body of Christ.
It is sometimes hard to connect with other Christians in any meaningful way. The Sunday church services line up like jets on the runway at Heathrow airport. People are landing and taking off every hour of Kensington Temple?s busy Sunday nine-hour-long service schedule. London?s population is transient. Most people we meet today will be somewhere else in three year?s time. We don?t know where to begin and are unsure how to develop the positive and Christ-enhancing relationships we long for.
Most people agree that we need relationships that are more personal and significant than average in order to express who we are and to discover a kindred spirit in others. We long to connect with our Christian friends so that together we can encourage each other in our spiritual quest to know God, to become like him and to experience his presence as a life style.
But we live in a brutally individualist society and our lives are fragmented. Our work life is unconnected to our social life, our social life is divorced from our church life and our family life is caught in the middle or virtually nonexistent. The price is isolation. We are busy people. Our days are filled with activities but we feel we are treading the hamster wheel of motion without meaning.
We look to the church for the answer and we have a right to find it among God?s people. The church is the only institution that has community at the heart of its mission and strategy. Our purpose is to grow followers of Christ by connecting to him and to each other. The development of meaningful relationships where every member belongs, connects and serves is central to what it means to be the church.
However, we often find the same superficiality in church relationships that exists outside the church. Church services become yet another occasion to focus on ourselves with the unspoken rules of the ?me culture?: come when you like, leave when you like, interact only if you really want to and move on when you become dissatisfied.
Encouragement through small groups
Mere ?Sunday Christianity? fails us. It is part of the culture of isolationism, not of Christ. It is simply not fit for the purpose Jesus intends. We cannot develop the meaningful relationships needed to grow as Christians in a crowded service once a week. We simply do not get the chance to connect with each other and encourage each other as we must.
The cell groups are an ideal way out of the cage our culture traps us in. While we love the celebration atmosphere of the large Sunday gatherings, we connect with each other outside the main services where we live most of our lives. Faith suddenly becomes relevant to our daily lives. We discover the meaning of true fellowship and the encouragement it brings. Cell group fellowship is the place for developing our ministry of encouragement. We learn how to love one another by building one another up by our words and actions. We meet to stir one another up to love and good deeds.
This way the ?settlers dream? can become a reality. We find a community, a home, not on the ?coyboy?s range? full of buffalo or antelope, but in the heart of London, whether the skies are cloudy or not, because we have built an environment of encouragement where we can all grow and flourish for God.

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The cry of the lost, the city of London in trouble

Colin Dye — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:40:27 +0000

"the cry", by Munch

At that time, I was deeply troubled by the state of my own city, London. I was heavily burdened for the lost who have no hope, no joy, no peace. When I travelled on the tube, I could see their burdens etched on their faces – their loneliness and fears, their disappointments and hurts.
And they didn’t know the half of their problems, for their condition was worse than they imagined. Not only were they lost in this life, they were lost forever unless they were saved by faith in Christ.
Where is hope?
I was alone with the Lord, under this burden, when I heard the cry of the lost in my spirit! I felt their despair and sensed their hopelessness. They were crying, “Where is the hope? Who can help us?” I shall never forget the sound of that cry.
But even that’s not all. Can you imagine the sound of the cry of the eternally lost? Maybe the cry of the utterly hopeless at the final judgment seems too awful to contemplate – but it’s desperately real. The people around you are really heading for hell – unless they repent and believe.
Yet how can they turn to God if they don’t hear his message? Faith comes from hearing the good news and you possess that news. How can you keep it to yourself? When Arsenal won football’s ‘double’, the streets of North London were full of celebrating supporters. They wanted to tell everyone about the new champions. Isn’t your news about Jesus’ love and power worth sharing even more joyfully?
Noah’s generation
At the end of this age, the lost will see that the great moves of God on earth have been completed. They will realise that the door of spiritual opportunity has been closed forever. Can you imagine their horror when they stand before the throne of God’s final judgment? The events of Noah’s day are a picture of our last days. Noah’s generation was so wicked and corrupt that God determined it would be given 120 years of grace before a flood of judgment finally came. God instructed Noah to build a boat to save him – together with his family and some representatives of the animal kingdom.
Then the heavens opened and the flood began. People who had given themselves to sin, came beating on the door of the boat. God himself had shut Noah in. The door of grace had been open for 120 years, and then it was firmly closed.
The last days
Understand these truths. The time draws near when Jesus will return and the day of grace will be over. The hour is coming when the door of opportunity for the lost will be shut forever! Only those who are in God’s boat, in Christ Jesus, will be saved. Only those who are fully in him will be safe on the Day of Judgment. The rest will be abandoned to the fate of their own choosing!
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…” Hebrews 9:27
Perhaps now you can understand what I mean by the cry of the lost. They must have stood outside, banging on the door of Noah’s boat, and bellowing, “Let us in! Let us in! We believe you now!” But it was too late. There was nothing that Noah could do. The harvest had finished; the summer had ended; and they were not saved.
We’re living in the last days. Although we do not know the precise day of Jesus’ return, we know that he’s coming soon! He us the door to salvation, and he’s wide open to all people everywhere.
Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven because he wanted to warn people not to go there. Hell is real.When the door of opportunity closes, the only alternative is Godless eternity. Now is the time to live for Jesus and to spread the Word. Now, while the harvest, and the summer’s still here.
Tears in Egypt
I am sure you know the story of Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. God sent many plagues to demonstrate and judge Egypt. The tenth and final plague was the death of the first born. God told each Jewish household to slay a lamb and apply the blood to the door-posts of their home. He promised that the angel of death would see the blood and ‘passover’ them. This is the picture of your salvation. Jesus is the lamb who has been sacrificed.When his blood is applied to your life, the judgment of God passes over you. This is wonderful news – but you must remember that God’s judgment strikes all those who are not under the blood.
Every person who does not trust in Christ’s atoning blood will experience God’s judgment. This includes your relatives, your friends, your neighbours – everybody you meet every day. Don’t you think that you should tell them that there is a way of escape?
It’s time to get among the lost
Surely it is time for you to get out among the lost and speak for Jesus. There are endless groups representing political, racial and religious minorities. They don’t seem to have many problems standing up for what they believe. Their testimony is everywhere!

A crowded london underground carriage, how many lost souls need to hear the gospel of Jesus?

And where is yours?
It is time for you to stand and be counted! People are lost and heading for hell. They’re hurting and shaking with pain. They’re hungry for lasting love and forgiveness. And you have the answer. It really is God’s right time for you to tell them. The harvest is ripe, please don’t let it rot.
This doesn’t mean that everyone will receive your message. But at least they will have heard. They will have had the opportunity to decide whether they want to spend eternity with God or apart from him. And their blood will not be on your hands.
It’ll bee too late after death
I long for every Christian to grasp this truth: after death it is too late! It is too late to accept Christ. It’s too late to start living for him. Your life on earth is what counts for eternity. I determined this for myself a long time ago. I am bound for heaven through faith in Christ! And, besides this, I am going to take as many people with me as I can!
One day, General Booth, the great founder of the Salvation Army, was addressing some new officers who had just completed their training.
He congratulated them on their fine efforts during their time in college, but said that – if he could – he would rather have trained them in a different manner. He said that he’d have preferred to send them to hell for ten minutes – and then let them loose on the world to preach Christ for the rest of their lives. Every genuine revival has emphasised the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell.We must never forget that people who die without Christ are lost forever. But those who believe the gospel will not be abandoned. They will live with Christ in heaven. We must not be afraid of warning people about the dangers of eternity, because we have the true answer. Praise God! One drop of the blood of Jesus extinguishes the fires of hell forever, for those who believe!
Let us listen to one scream, for one cry of hopelessness, from the lost; let us spend thirty seconds in hell. This would do more for us than a thousand seminars and sermons. After such a taste of a Godless eternity, we would harvest for God, with a dedication and passion which would lead many to him.
There’s still just enough time
The people around you are not yet dead. There is hope for them while there is breath in their bodies. So there is still time for you to reach them. Act now, before it really is too late! Don’t be fooled by the calm exterior of the lost. Most are crying inside! Many carry deep pain. Others know that there is no real meaning to their lives.
Of course, some people are unaware of their spiritual danger. Like passengers on the Titanic, they party without any idea that they are soon going to sink – forever. They are in special need of the gospel. They need to be warned and won.
Like the slaves of Egypt, people without Christ are under the burden of a cruel master. They feel the oppression of sin and selfishness. The loveless lash of Satan’s whip cuts into their lives. Though sin may give pleasure for a time, it ultimately brings misery, hopelessness and eternal isolation.
The lost are desperate for an answer. They are crying, “Who will care for my soul? Who’ll show me the way home?” Will you! Will you be a true witness? Will you become one of God’s spiritual harvesters? It’s still not too late, and the need is very, very great.

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The reason for our hope

Colin Dye — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:57:27 +0000

Colin Dye

It is said that you can live 6 weeks without food, 3 days without water and only 4 minutes without air, but you cannot live one second without hope. Hope, vital as it is, is failing in today?s world. The youths who perpetrated the acts of looting and vandalism in London last month were said to have acted out of desperation, having no hope. They were described as victims of a society that has given them no future, nothing to look forward to.
For us Christians, hope is an essential part of our relationship with God. Jesus is our hope and he gives us a confidence to face the future. We can be sure that he will never leave us nor fail us. We are persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We are convinced that God is working out all things for our good and for his glory.
Hope in the Bible is ?a certain expectation of a positive future event?. We speak of the hope of the return of Christ, the hope of the resurrection from the dead and the hope of heaven. All these things are guaranteed us because we belong to Jesus, the source and ultimate reality of all things. By him all things consist and are held together.
You would think that such comforting ideas would be snatched up at once by politicians, sociologists, psychologists and educationalists. Imagine if all these people incorporated Christian hope in both their private and professional lives. Think of the difference it would make if such spiritual confidence lay at the heart of every personal and public decision in our society. Hope in Christ gives us stability in this life and the motivation to make a difference. It is a solid foundation to live for God now as well as confidence for the hereafter.
However, not everyone is persuaded that such hope exists, least of all in the Christian gospel. There are many reasons for this. One of these is that the world is governed by its senses. It is dominated by the natural and is blind to the spiritual. Spiritual truth is not innate. God has put eternity in our hearts and we all have the remains of a once-perfect image of God in our hearts. That?s why humanity is incurably religious. However, we are totally dependent on God?s revelation to find our way back to him.

?Always be ready to give a defence to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you (1 PETER 3:15)

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