No Pain

Posted on by Shannon

All of us are well aware it is flu and cold season in our part of the world. It’s almost impossible to escape its clutches and many people suffer through a series of ailments for months. Yet how can we complain when so many suffer with more serious illnesses that take extensive treatments to cure, if at all? Pain and suffering are part of human life.

Statistics Canada says that we fill 300 million drug prescriptions a year (2005 figures), which works out to roughly 10 for each man, woman and child – or 3 billion dollars worth! That’s a lot of medicine to help us fight painful conditions.

In John’s final New Testament book, he describes “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev.21:2). Most people think he is writing about heaven; others believe it is a figurative picture of the church protected by God. Perhaps it is the latter but foreshadowing the former. My point is that He promises “there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (v4). Can you imagine an existence with no pain? John seems to imply there will be no more sickness either. At the very least, we understand that pain will be absent from heaven. Wouldn’t that be nice!

This is not just pie in the sky. Jesus successfully healed people from their illnesses and pain every day. He was the Great Physician, and He knew what He was talking about. One of my favorite passages in the New Testament is Matthew 4:23-25. “And Jesus was going about in all Galilee…healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people…all who were taken with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them.”

Looking forward to a time when there will no longer be any pain helps us deal with our own struggles in life for the present time.

Relief is coming!

– Tim Johnson

Made for Another World

Posted on by Shannon

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says, “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.” We can’t know all the purposes of God, but we can certainly be aware of eternity. He has put it into our hearts – a certain taste or longing for it that cannot be discovered through the experiences of life. Men may deny eternity, or laugh at the need for it. But there will always be a longing within us for something more than we have experienced.

Creatures are not born with desire unless satisfactions for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger – there is such a thing as food. A duck wants to swim and there is such a thing as water. People desire to work and there is work to be done.

We find in ourselves a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy. The most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Augustine, the great thinker and church leader of the 4th century, said, “Thou has made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they learn to rest in Thee.” That says it as succinctly as it could be said. The unrest we see in our world and in our hearts, tells us we have not found our rest until we have entered the world for which we are made – eternity.

C.S. Lewis, the popular British theologian of the 1950’s, helped us when he said, “Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns for us along our journey, but he takes care to see that we do not mistake any of them for our home.”

– David Johnson, with revisions from Tim Johnson

Eat or Die

Posted on by Shannon

In our cold winter months, we often think nothing is alive outside. While many animals hibernate until spring, tree squirrels are amazingly active all year. They’re interesting little animals that can entertain us by their acrobatics in the trees and along fences.

My research revealed that our black variety in Barrie are actually Eastern Grey Squirrels. Rather than dig a burrow in the ground and hibernate for the winter, they build tree nests, called dreys, and use that as a home base. They roam our neighbourhoods all winter to feed mostly on nuts scattered under the snow, or what remains on trees. They’re out in the worst weather hunting for food, and seem to thrive.

Now what’s my point in all of this? If a simple squirrel must work hard to eat, even on frigid winter days without fail, isn’t it true that we must work hard to feed on the word of God just as regularly? We feel like hibernating in winter too, but we have to get out and be with other Christians at Bible study times regularly. It takes work, inconvenience and determination, but that’s what we have to do to be strong and survive.

Paul told Timothy to be “constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following” (1 Tim.4:6). This is how he was to remain strong as a preacher. Peter urged Christians to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet.3:18). Where does that knowledge come from? By being taught by well prepared teachers, and by your own personal study. We must avail ourselves of both. Even in winter.

Nature knows it must eat or die. Do we?

– Tim Johnson

The Grinch

Posted on by Shannon

One of the most amusing characters this time of year is the Grinch, who despises Christmas and has a generally negative personality. People like him have been around for a long time.

Such a man was encountered by Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13 when they took the gospel to Cyprus and the household of the Roman Governor. In his employ was a magician named, ironically, Bar-Jesus (meaning the son of someone named Jesus), aka Elymas. When Paul tried to teach the gospel to the governor, Elymas kicked up an awful fuss and tried to “turn the proconsul away from the faith” (v8). He was a first-class Grinch. Paul said to him, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?” (v9) That’s quite an indictment against this troublesome man.

How many times have people tried to turn others away from the good news of Jesus Christ? Or made crooked the straight ways of the Lord? We often see modern-day versions of Elymas, who do all they can to discourage others.

Sometimes we can have a Grinch-attitude by criticizing good things that may simply be new, different, inconvenient, or something that threatens the status-quo. I’m not talking about matters that are rebellious or un-Biblical, which are rightly rejected. But good and righteous things are sometimes criticized just because we don’t like to consider change.

The New Testament urges us to be positive, kind, open to that which is good, Biblical and helpful. “Encourage one another day after day” (Heb.3:13). “Encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing” (1 Thess.5:11). Faith has an open attitude to God and the brethren. “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col.3:12).

Let’s make sure the Grinch is just a fairy-tale, not a reality within us.

– Tim Johnson

Unfathomable Riches

Posted on by Shannon

The apostle Paul was ever aware of how unworthy he was to preach the gospel. In Ephesians 3:8 he said, “To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ.”

His was a world in which half of all people scraped along to make ends meet, and the other half strove for power and great wealth. Some would say things haven’t changed very much today. At one time, Paul was an accomplished Jewish Pharisee, respected for his strength and zeal and his opposition to the early church. He would not have been unfamiliar with wealth and power. But all that changed when he met Jesus.

In Paul’s estimation, he went from greatness to the very least of all saints. His pride of power and place no longer existed. He now lived to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But God gave him the valuable and ironic role of preaching to the Gentiles, no longer the Jews.

But it was the substance of what he taught them that was so stunning: “the unfathomable riches of Christ.” They are riches that are so deep and complex that no man can ever wear them out or fully learn them all. They were mysteries that had been “hidden in God for ages,” but now revealed. Paul was given the work of preaching such marvels about Christ to people who had never heard them before.

Most of us live basic lives without much wealth to enjoy or power to wield. We wonder if society has passed us by. But Paul reminds us in Ephesians 3:8 that we have been given unfathomable riches that open up to us more and more every day, and will be fully revealed in the next life. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom.8:18).

Like Paul, we are certainly unworthy of such profound things.

– Tim Johnson