Salvogesis

Perfect love drives out fear: People have been filled with so much fear and hate in this country that it is not only driving out love but it is also clouding our reason - at least mine. There is lots I do not understand. Look at our rules still in place right now about Covid-19. I don't understand them. People are now allowed to be in bars dancing and drinking and being in close contact with one another. You can be crammed in a seat in sports game so close to someone else that they can spill their drink on you or spray the food from their mouth all over you.  At the same time, in our province, one must be vaccinated to eat at a restaurant where the server takes your order from the table. The waiter, however, who goes from table-to-table does not need to be vaccinated. If unvaccinated people are more likely to carry the virus, then the legislation is putting all the customers and especially the staff at risk; if not, then what is the point of the passport - to keep unvaccinated patr...

We have recently moved back to Vancouver Island. We have just moved into a new place. I had forgotten how well dandelions grow on the Island. Those little yellow flowers are everywhere. I think we have more yellow flowers in the yard than green blades of grass. These flowers reproduce quite easily and effectively. Even if you pluck one out it goes to seed and effectively casts those seeds to the wind causing more and more of these little yellow flowers to grow. This is really the same with our testimonies. Honestly truly if we are happy that we have Christ in our life and that we spend our life with Christ, as we share that information more and more people will realize how great it is to be with Christ in good times and tough times. As we experience and share our testimony about the comfort and joy of the Lord. we have the opportunity to see maybe even as many people come to share in that joy with us as dandelions that come from a single flower who shares its seed. May we all be as...

At a conference last year, we saw a video of  Immaculée Ilibagiza  speaking and I have recently read her book,  Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust .[vii] I will inevitably share with you more than one story from this book as it is one of the most powerful books I have ever read on power of forgiveness and the power of love. She lived through the Rwandan genocide: her mother, father, 2 brothers and many of her friends and extended family were among the up to 1 million people murdered by machete in 1994. She speaks about when it was all over and she first returned to her home and saw what had happened to her family. It was almost overwhelming: the devil tempted her with hate and with the sins of plotting, or considering, or fantasizing revenge; Sin tempted her to hope for bad things to happen to the people who killed her family, or to think bad things about those who tortured or/and killed her family. Sin was crouching at her door wanting to devour...

SIN PERSONIFIED There is one more aspect of sin that is very important here as well. Sin is not only an identity statement, a choice we make or an action we perform and it is even more than merely missing the mark or not measuring up; sin can also be a powerful force, as powerful as any addiction or habit; The Apostle Paul says, Romans 7:15, ‘I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate [to do] I do’. I don’t know if any of us can relate to that. I don’t know if any of us have ever struggled with wanting to do one thing and winding up doing another. I like the way the writer of Genesis speaks about sin in Genesis 4. He writes about sin as if it were a kitten, a cat or some other predator. Does anyone here have a cat? Have you ever seen them hunting? They watch their prey for a long time and then they slowly move closer and then they crouch, ready to pounce on their target, and then they strike, capturing the one they were hunting in their claws ...

NOT MEASURING UP John Phillips explains sin as coming short of the divine standard. He gives this illustration: Two men went to the recruiting office in London to join the guards regiment. The standard height for a guardsman was a minimum of six feet. One man was taller than the other, but when they were measured officially both were disqualified. The shorter of the two measured only five feet seven inches and was far too short; his companion measured five feet eleven and a half inches and, stretch to his utmost, as he did, he could not make it any more. Nor did his pleas avail. It mattered nothing that his father was a guardsman, that he promised to be a good soldier, that he had already memorized the drills and knew the army regulations by heart. He was short of the standard.           Yes, he is taller than his friend (just like some people may seem holier than the rest of us) but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he is taller, he still isn’t ...

Sin is one of the key things that John is writing about in his short letter so I thought that we might spend some time looking into what the Bible means when it speaks about sin. EVIL Sin, in the Bible, can be defined a few different ways: there is the word Awon, which refers to a deep moral evil that is mentioned in Amos and a few other places.[ii] MISSING THE MARK The Greek word for ‘sinned’ in this passage,  hamartanō , carries with it the classic definition of sin that we have probably heard before: that of ‘missing the mark’. It brings to mind the idea of an archer shooting for a target and falling short, missing the target. On the surface this seems innocuous enough but… if we find out that that archer is William Tell – who is famous because he shoots apples off of people’s heads – and if we then find out that the apple is about to be placed on our head, it becomes important. You don’t want him to miss the mark. William Tell, of course, was ...

This week, in the valley here, we are looking at 1 John. On-line, this is the first installment of a five part series. In person, we are actually half way through a mini-series. There are these great little tracts called the 4 points. We have been using them as a rough outline here. If you haven't seem them before you can find them on-line at the4points.com Last week Susan spoke about love. Next week, if all goes according to plan, we will speak about Jesus' death and then we will chat about following Jesus. SIN Today we are talking about one of everybody’s favourite topics: sin! Okay, maybe that isn’t anybody’s favourite topic but still it is what we looking at today. 1 John has a few things to say about sin and at first read it can sometimes seem a little confusing. For example: 1 John 1:8 says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” AND  1 John 3:6 says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to si...

I was speaking with a colleague the other day about an incident. Another person had been less than honest with us on an occasion or two. We were trying to come to terms with this. At one point I mused that this person seemed to always be afraid when he addressed us. I mentioned that this was weird because he usually did not bring us any new information and we usually did not greet him in a hostile manner. He also had more authority than either of us. Why was he dishonest with us? Danielle Strickland spoke to the Officers of the OCE Division of The Salvation Army recently. She spoke about oppression. She said the language of oppression is lying and the currency of oppression is fear. This resonated with our experience. Are you experiencing oppression in your life? If so pray to the Lord. Pray for your oppressors and pray for those being oppressed. Claim the promise that perfect love drives out fear; love your enemies, and pray for deliverance for all who need to experience the full ...

I received as a present a book entitled, ‘Swansong’. It is a collection of letters, speeches, and most of all journal entries written with imminent fall of Germany pending, from April 20 th 1945 until the end of the war a couple of weeks later. There are journal entries from famous people like Churchill and Mussolini; Russians, English, and Italians; but mostly the journals are from everyday Germans watching their whole society come crashing down around them. Friends and family are dying or being separated from each other. Homes are being bombed day and night but if they go out in the street they may be shot by their ‘liberators’. There is no food. People sleep with their clothes on in case they have to flee at a moment’s notice. People try to figure out how to surrender without getting shot or killed in the process - just so they can eat, sleep and not be bombed. It is tragic. Here is the thing – even though no one seems to believe Goebells’ propaganda anymore, the people se...