
I invite you to pray with me, Father God hear our prayer, and we humbly cry to you as it is written in your word, Lucas 11:9:” I tell you Keep asking, and it will given to you, Keep seeking, and you will find, Keep knocking, and it will be open to you)” We are requesting healing for our dear members of our family and also dear friends who are suffering from illnesses in their lives fighting and suffering under a lot of pain, You know them by their names; (Gaby P, Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G, Fega G, Rosy Ch, Patricia L.) Also, some of them are tired of spiritual struggles, losing their faith in you, Strengthening their trust in you with a miracle in their lives, oh! Father God, hear our prayer, and we also pray for all the people around the world, especially the children who are suffering from wars, devastation, hunger, pain, hate and disbelieving in you also, bless the ones who are reading this message and their families. Heal the Land of those Countries at war; you love them so much, oh Father God, hear our prayer, we ask you in the name of Our Lord of Lords and King of Kings, your beloved son Jesus Christ. AMEN!
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God the Father, we thank you for your answer to our prayers with
The good news, with the recovery of health for some
Strengthen them so that they may regain their faith in you
And that they may be witnesses that you love them and
that you respond when we trust and believe in you
Thank you Father God in the name
of Jesus our Lord of Lords and King of Kings
Praise be to your name
always and forever, AMEN.
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For the early morning commuter there was no reason to be concerned. He had given himself lots of time, the route familiar to him. One he had taken for many years, so he gave it slight attention. Sure, some traffic flaggers indicating things weren’t as they had been but he was a longtime resident, they just on site, momentary visitors. His knowledge of the route gathered over many years, theirs based on mere minute observations. And so as he thought it, he would just navigate as he always had – perhaps a little more cautious likely due to a pothole or two but he, far more aware of what was - until in a too late, cataclysmic moment, he realized he wasn’t.
A sinkhole he never saw coming. A sinkhole he never imagined he would experience until he had. Swallowed up in a moment. Ignoring the protective yellow tape and orange vested personnel, he thought to be a work around nuisance. Ignoring what needed to be seen.
It is in this context of dangers that surround, sinkholes that suddenly swallow, that takes us into the passage we are considering this morning where Paul says, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore don’t be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is :15-17.
Phillips renders it, Live life, then with a due sense of responsibility, not as men who do not know the meaning and purpose of life but as those who do. Make the best use of your time, despite all the difficulties of these days. Don’t be vague but firmly grasp what you know to be the will of God.
Paul’s exhortation, live with purpose. Live with meaning, not drifting from day to day robotically pursuing a meaningless 24/7.
How? Well as Phillips effectively paraphrases it, Don’t be vague or if you like, don’t live unsighted and undeclared. This isn’t saying we shouldn’t fully engage in things we enjoy. It’s not saying our lives should be wrapped up in the serious and the profound – it’s saying live with the end in mind - who we are and who we are to be. This not so much defined by what we are against as much as a clear, unapologetic declaration of who we live for, Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us... Eph 5:1,2
It’s because of that Paul says, Therefore do not be foolish. Proverbs tells us, A fool is reckless and careless and that, The way of the fool is right in his own eyes 14:16, 12:15. Countless other Scriptures speak to the way of the foolish but none better than the definition given us by the Psalmist, The fool says in his heart, there is no God Ps 14:1. Reading this, we can easily think of atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Ernest Hemingway but you know who else can fit into a similar category of living foolishly? – Christians who know God but choose to live as if they don’t.
Oh I don’t mean those who live wild and reckless lives, I mean all too many, who often settle for Christian lives that clock in on Sunday morning, then clock out 1½ hour later as they get on with their ‘real’ life. In the process settling for an acquaintance relationship with God rather than the intimate relationship He wants us to know. Awareness not dependence. Connection not communion. Familiarity not amazement. Missing the relationship Jesus truly wants us to know.
Settling for a faith like this can be an easy thing to fall into, especially when we lose sight of God’s heart and His great love for us. It’s not that we don’t believe His love. It’s not that we don’t have His love. It’s not even that we don’t have moments when we experienced His love.
But what God wants for us is to walk in His love, believing and trusting Him - even when we don’t see, when we don’t understand – still then His love is in us, through us, surrounding us – His love and power wanting to permeate our lives, change our attitudes, shape our behaviours, and impact our decisions With this, Paul giving warning that we are to, Not be foolish but to understand what the will of the Lord is – God’s will for my life. When we think of the will of God we often reduce this to does God want me to enter that profession, marry that person, go to that school or move to that city, or God please make it not so, become that missionary.
Yet while it’s good to want God’s direction for things like these, the Lord’s will is, at first level, not uncertain, not hidden. He has just told us what that is – to walk worthy of Him. In our school, in our workplace, in our homes – look carefully then how you walk. As you are surrounded by different beliefs, by different values, by different behaviours – walk differently – walking out of step with the evil of the day and far more importantly, walking in step with the footprints we are to follow. His promise to us? Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh Gal 5:15.
But the challenge? – walking in His footprints will often take us on challenging paths. Paths where we get bumped around; where things come at us that try to knock us off course. Paths where a multitude are streaming the other way, jostling, sometimes aggressively opposing as we walk against the grain. God’s direction sometimes hard, sometimes unclear, more indistinct than we want – our next footprint often revealed only one step at a time after a previous step is taken.
Does that mean that God doesn’t give us a longer range view like who we should marry, what job we are to take, what school we attend? Doesn’t mean that.

After all God planted in us our skills, our interests, our passions. So God IS interested in our
PROFession – but He is far more interested in the profession we make about who He is in our life! About this we cannot afford to be vague - because it is that profession that determines everything. Seeing Him as God, Supreme over all is not enough. Seeing Him as God, Shepherd of our life is not enough. All that matters is do we know Him as Father through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the Cross to be our Saviour, is our only way to God. But that pro -fession is to go further to be marked by progr- ession as we follow Him as Lord, allowing Him to change us in our speech, in our priorities, in our behaviours as we more and more reflect Jesus.
Earlier Ephesians 5 tells us: Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self Eph 5:1-2, 4:22-24.
Putting off your old self and putting on the new. 1 Thess 4:3 tells us, This is the will of God - your sanctification - that you flee sexual immorality. In 1 Thess 5:18, This is the will of God in Christ for you that you give thanks in all circumstances And in 1 Pet 2:15, This is the will of God that by doing good you put to silence the ignorance of foolish people
These admonitions encouraging us to live faithfully in the world that surrounds. Faithful, living to please Christ in a world that presses in, a world that wants to shape in ways that are opposed to how God calls us to live.
So I get it – live differently. I get the concept and I know I should do better than I’ve done; be better than I’ve been. But how? - Try harder? Be more vigilant in where I go and what I do? The quick answer is yes but the true answer is no. Because we can’t decide ourselves into a new way to live. We can try and for a time it may work when our will power is strong enough to empower our won’t power. But like January’s fitness gyms, that commitment soon falls off.
Which is why God takes us to where we go next – His strength not ours, Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit :18 .
In this verse we are given 2 commands – that can be summed up in one word, control. First, what is not to control – seemingly alcohol, this image not chosen randomly. Ephesus was wine country and a prominent god? Dionysus / Bacchus god of wine, festivity and ecstasy. ‘Worshippers were described as holy bands that danced by torchlight who under the under the god’s inspiration, were possessed with occult powers’.
That said, wine wasn’t the issue as much as it is to what in our lives are we bowing? Is it our pleasure, our power, our achievements, our reputation, our family? What’s controlling our priorities, driving our pursuits, filling our purposes? What’s filling our time and defining our identity?
And God’s command, don’t be controlled, don’t be shaped by those things. As good as some of these things may be, they can be our place of worship where our life is centered.
Instead he says, Be filled with the Spirit. Before proceeding let’s be clear, when we asked Jesus to forgive our sins, the Bible tells us we were immediately indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, a spirit we are told is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, He lives with you and will be in you; the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead who is living in you Jn 14:17, Col 1:27, Rom 8:11.
We are also told that this same Holy Spirit sealed us Eph 1:13, that is when we truly gave our lives to Jesus, our salvation can never be taken from us – the Holy Spirit secures and guarantees it.
But that does not mean that we are necessarily filled with the Spirit. When we hear this phrase, we think of a liquid needing to be topped up. But the Holy Spirit isn’t a thing, He’s a person. We can’t get more of Him because He doesn’t come in different sized amounts. He IS who He is. What is in question is who or what has control? Who has the love of our life, the direction of our life, the priorities of our life, the center of our life? In short, who has central control of our life?
Is the Holy Spirit present to save but not enthroned to transform? Is He present to convict but not trusted to fully forgive? Is He present to help but not relied on, empowering us to live?
So how do we become filled with the Spirit? By daily asking Him to take control, yielding to His leading, listening and following His guiding, filling our hearts with God’s truth.
Let me illustrate to help bring this home not so much so you better understand but so you and I better decide where we are and what God is calling us to do. The first to evaluate where we are.
Present as Saviour? – in our lives – the forgiver of our sin - Yes. Present – sealing our eternity assuring us we will be with Him forever. Yes. Present undeniably just like here. Milk – choc sauce
But changing us into the likeness of Christ? That’s altogether different. Changing us so we live with new hope, new direction, new purpose? Again, entirely different.
Christ’s purpose isn’t just to be present in our lives, His desire is to fill our lives with His power, His truth, His life. Being filled - His command but our choice in how we respond. To better understand, this command not to dictate but to enable, one more illustration to bring this home.
Let’s change the image of a liquid to a hand filling a glove - the glove powerless to act until it is filled with the hand. Without the hand, that glove is powerless. It’s what Jesus says in Jn 15:5,
Apart from me you can do nothing. So God’s command, to be filled is because He knows we can’t do life without His continual enabling.

Be filled in Greek is in the passive tense, which is saying, what’s done is based on what God does not us. As we submit, He ‘does’. It’s not about us, working ourselves into some euphoric state where the Spirit suddenly comes and overpowers. We can’t read more, study more, ‘top up’ more. What we are to do is yield more to His presence that is always within us, giving control over to Him. The second thing to note is that in Greek, “be filled” is NOT a euphoric event, it is a continuous process, “Keep on being filled”. As life drains and when life exhausts, we NEED the power that comes from ‘Keep on being filled” – God doing what we can’t.
Unfortunately a lot of the teaching on “being filled with the Spirit” or “being baptized with the Spirit” isn’t applied to the 24/7 where we do life. Instead it focuses on powerful manifestations of God – ‘signs and wonders’, miracles of healing, or speaking in tongues. Certainly God sometimes does move in these ways yet Paul’s emphasis about “being filled with the Spirit” isn’t on the spectacular. His emphasis is on the every day, where we do life - in those places - God’s Spirit enabling and empowering as we will better see next week. In those places transformed day by day, to take on the appearance of Jesus. Not momentary event encounters but life changed people in Christ.
Life places. Everyday places - living in God-honoring ways with those closest to us. With those who know us best. With those who see us clearest. In these places, putting on Christ as Gal 3:27 tells us, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Put on Christ for what? The extraordinary? Some great battle to come? Some great opponent that’s about to come in your way?
Perhaps but I doubt it. Far more importantly, it’s God’s call to put on the new, His being filled with the Spirit for the every day. The living with the kids that are driving you crazy. The routine of what the boss now wants you to do. The bad call in the game. The traffic jam wait. His power to help us to faithfully live and walk in the ordinary.

The ordinary like it would have been for David – day after day just guarding sheep. As far he would have known, his life of doing the mundane was as good as it was going to get. He so ‘less’ than his warrior brothers. They people of accomplishment, of whom others were proud. Not that they were proud of him. To them he was just a father-sent scout to deliver supplies and check up on how they were doing. All his resume had to show was as a musician to sheep and a writer of songs.
Faithful? sure. Trustworthy? Yeah but doing what of any value? He had no bloodied sword that claimed victory over any conquering Philistine. Seemingly no need of the Spirit to do what he was doing. Just there in the unseen. Cleaning up after sheep and writing some songs.
And then one ordinary day in an ordinary valley, coming from an ordinary family, God doing the extraordinary. God using faithfulness in our ordinary to do His extraordinary. God doing the extraordinary determined by one thing – who is in control? The extraordinary of God empowered in a life that was fully yielded to Him.
One more thing to consider and that is a picture of how God describes how this Spirit filled life should look. No exploits here. At first it also appears that this description is what should be seen within the walls of a church as we relate with other Christians. Yet while in some respects this is true, I don’t think this is the main thrust to what Paul is saying.
He describes that life in :19–21 where he tells us 4 things what this Spirit filled life should look like: speaking in psalms, hymns, & spiritual songs, singing and making music, giving thanks, submitting to each other in the fear of Christ.
SPEAKING IN PSALMS, HYMNS, & SPIRITUAL SONGS Surely this is metaphoric – I’m hardly going to go around quoting Psalms to my wife and kids, let alone singing to fellow workers on the assembly line.
I believe Paul is saying that God’s power enables my speech to honor Him - the product of what is fed into my life because what captures my heart, shapes my life. My speech is changed and my actions are changed. In the Psalms, I am reminded of the greatness of God and the smallness of myself. Yet also in those Psalms, again and again we see life in the hard places, where we are misrepresented, where we come under attack, where God’s presence isn’t always felt. But those places also bringing us back to the truth that in all things, He deserves the praise. In the hymns – I am reminded of age old truths of those who have gone before. Truth that holds me with declarations greater than my circumstance - Great is Thy Faithfulness, when my path is unclear, Blessed Assurance, when His presence is unfelt and It is Well with My Soul when storms feel too great. Spiritual songs that speak out worship that centers me – reminding me that my purpose, my hope, my joy are in Christ not in my business deal, not my financial well-being and not in the bliss of my relationships.
speaking in psalms, hymns, & spiritual songs CHRIST DIRECTED & CHRIST REFLECTED
SINGING AND MAKING MUSIC – songs that affirm and transform. Now this has to be metaphoric because even my ‘late’ dog might have had reason to howl when I broke out a tune. But singing does something that the spoken word cannot. Words put to music that not only stick, they get to be replayed again and again. Songs planting truth deep into my emotional bank account to draw from when life turns bad. Music singing out joy and giving comfort when pain overwhelms.
Scientists at the University of Missouri validated what we didn’t need a PhD to tell us, that music improves our mood. When people are sad or have suffered loss, music can soothe because people identify with the tone and lyrics of the music. Music elevating when depression wants to take hold in its vice like grip. But song is often more than that – it often has an audience even when we do not know. That audience first us, then those we don’t know are listening.
I remember as a young guy cutting the lawn – singing away, I thought drowned out by the sound of the lawnmower. How was I to know that neighbours heard and commented on what I thought were sounds covered over by a Briggs and Stratton engine? For my own sake, I am deeply appreciative for the Christian music that filled my home as I grew up. Among other things it re-affirmed my faith and filled our home with peace.
Singing and making music PRAISE THAT AFFIRMS AND DEEPENS FAITH
GIVING THANKS
Thankfulness is an essential ingredient for joy. There’s no way to “rejoice always” 1 Thess 5:16 without giving thanks in everything :18. That’s why ungrateful people are so grumpy -
Harvard Health observes, “With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people recognize the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves.
Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman asked research subjects to write about early memories and then deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked. Participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores, the impact greater than any other intervention, with benefits lasting for a month. As has been said, He who forgets the language of gratitude can never be on speaking terms with happiness.
Why?
Gratitude transforms anxiety into peace, which passes all
understanding Phil. 4:6-7. It reminds us that God alone
is our strength and has control over all things.
Gratitude keeps us continually aware that the Lord is close by.
Giving Thanks
KEEPS THE FOCUS ON THE ONE WHOM IS WORTHY OF THANKS



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