Oct 26th

2 Kings 7     Daniel 11     1 Timothy 4     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves.  2 Kings 7:9

It seems to me that there are three important spiritual principles illustrated in this chapter:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->i.        <!--[endif]-->It’s only when we are truly desperate that we throw ourselves most fully on God’s grace, protection and provision.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->ii.      <!--[endif]-->God’s ways and thoughts are far above ours (yet again!!)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->iii.    <!--[endif]-->Good news is for sharing.

It needed these social rejects, with nothing to lose, to discover the amazing fact that the enemy who had caused them so much despair and distress had fled leaving everything behind.  The same Lord who had kept the Arameans from seeing in our previous chapter, now caused them to hear what was not happening.  A supernatural intervention which again, was beyond human imagining or engineering.  Interesting too, that Joram and his army don’t really believe and accept what has happened v12.  It seems too good to be true.  There must be a catch. 

I was at a meeting once where the speaker was trying to illustrate God’s free gift of grace.  He held up a £5 note and said that whoever came for it could have it.  The adults were far too suspicious and worried about being taken in and humiliated, and it took a child to come and take the money.  God gives us good gifts without conditions or catches which he wants us to accept with thanksgiving.

V8-9  There is something quite comical about the lepers gorging themselves on the fine food; slurping down the wine; stashing away all the treasure they could carry – then realising that it was far beyond what they could find uses for; that they were being selfish – and ultimately they would be punished for their selfishness.

Some reflections for us:

• How desperate are we for what God wants to give us?  How aware of our need – the inadequacy of our own riches, abilities, gifts?
• Do we allow God to be God or are we trying to make Him in our image – organise him into answering our prayers and needs in the ways we think he should?
• How aware are we that the Good News that we have come to accept for ourselves is for sharing?  What are we doing to let other people know that it is for them – through our actions and through our words? 

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 25th

2 Kings 6     Daniel 10     1 Timothy 3     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?  2 Kings 6:33

Can you relate to King Joram?  He is in a desperate situation.  His city is under siege; food of the most repulsive sort is extortionately expensive – and the horrific story of these starving women being prepared to eat their own babies underlines the utterly dehumanising effect of this ordeal.  Joram is in charge and supposed to find an answer.  He has no solution – no recourse apart from mourning with his people v30, and in complete helplessness and frustration to lash out and hurt something, somehow, somewhere, so he decides to close down on God v33.  Surely He could be doing something to turn things around.  Why does he not act?

  This is the assurance that we still have:  as soon as we pray, God hears and acts, though it may not be instantly visible - Daniel 9:23. Waiting is a very important and vastly underrated spiritual discipline.

The dreadful ordeal is all the more galling when contrasted with how God acted on behalf of his people in former times 6:8-23 – giving Elisha supernatural warnings about where the Aramean army is; when the enemy are blinded and led into Samaria where they could have been finished off had it been a holy war.  However, the city has now descended into chaos and cannibalism.  Where are the heavenly hosts and the chariots of fire when they are urgently needed?  Joram needs to wait to find out and of course the answer – once again – is completely beyond his thinking or imagining.

• Are you currently having to wait for God’s timing and visible answer to a situation you have been praying persistently and fervently about?
• Are you tempted to give up and shut down on God?  To withdraw your trust?
• Is the wait too long?  The burden too heavy?  The temptation without an apparent way out?

I find it really helpful to declare with the Psalmist:

I am still confident of this:

I will see the goodness of the Lord

I know I will see the goodness of the Lord in this present life.

Wait on the Lord;

be strong and take heart

and wait on the Lord.  Ps 27

Your waiting in faith and trust are hugely glorifying to God. Those who hope in him will not be disappointed.  Is 49:23

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 24th

2 Kings 5     Daniel 9     1 Timothy 2     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.’ 2 Kings 5:10

God wants us to know Him – not just about Him, but by relating personally to Him.  That is why He sent us Jesus and gives us the Holy Spirit.  He has also provided a number of other ways by which we can continue this process of getting to know Him:  Scripture, prayer, the testimonies of others.  I have also found difficult and challenging times a wonderful opportunity for getting to know more of God – His grace, His power and His help, His healing, His love and his transformation. 

Joni Eareckson who was crippled in a diving accident also writes about this:

‘I’ve felt the crunch of decades of paralysis.  The encroachments of my limitations often feel like the cutting edge of a spade digging up twisted vines of self-centredness and the dirt of sin and rebellion.  Uprooting rights, clearing out the debris of habitual sins.  Shovelling away pride.  To believe in God in the midst of suffering is to empty myself; and to empty myself is to increase the capacity – the pond area – for God.  The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God.  Then he, like a spring, is free to flow through me. “‘He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From His innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’” Jn 7:38.

For Namaan, knowing the God of Israel marked the end of a process which started when the young girl from Israel shared what she knew to be the answer to her master’s leprosy v3.  Namaan is persuaded to go to Israel and realises that God’s power does not reside in those places we associate with human power v7.   Were it not for his servants, his pride may have got the better of him; healing would have eluded him and he would not have experienced the reality and power of the God of Israel.  However, he is healed and convinced that the Lord God of Israel is the true God. He has a powerful testimony based on his personal experience.

Who in this story do you relate to today?

The little girl who sees a need and knows her God will be the answer to it?

The king of Israel – whose knowledge of God is second-hand, helpless, clueless and panic-stricken in the face of Namaan’s need?

Namaan’s servants – patiently standing by him and encouraging him to do what is hard – but knowing enough to sense that it is life-giving.

Elisha – absolutely confident in the power of the God he knows and serves. v8

Namaan – who knows intellectually what to do to claim his healing but struggles with his pride to do what it takes. 

Pray that whatever your circumstances today, you will be the means of others coming to know and experience God’s love – and that you would also come to ‘know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ Eph 3:19

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 23rd

2 Kings 4     Daniel 8     1 Timothy 1     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Everything is alright.  2 Kings 4:22

Some of us may be aware of the words which have found their way onto posters, wall plaques, greetings cards, and attributed to Mother Julian of Norwich:  ‘All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.’  This can, of course seem like a mind over matter mantra, a desperate grasping at straws, a reluctance to see the chaos and pain in a situation and to speak empty words of reassurance over it.  However, this truth must surely be at the heart of our Christian faith.  Despite outer turbulence, chaos, distress and disorder which Jesus assured us we would experience in this world, God is sovereign and there is a place of deep peace and rest of those who trust in Him.  He has overcome the world and he is at work in all things for the good of those who love Him.

In our chapter today, we move from large-scale battle scenes, kings, armies, a spectacular, miraculous intervention from the Lord of hosts, the destruction of the Moabite army and the tragic and futile sacrifice by the Moabite king of his son to secure success against Edom – to two stories of desperate mothers in anguish over their sons.  The Lord of Hosts does not discriminate numerically, socially or in terms of gender, age or influence.  He stretches out his hand to the most humble and marginalised. 

A godly widow and her two sons on the brink of poverty and slavery are rescued as she obeys Elisha’s instruction to borrow jars (irrespective of what her neighbours would think!!) to be filled with the miraculously unceasing flow of oil.  What an amazing learning experience for those two boys gathering jars and witnessing the most extraordinary miracle of provision before their eyes. 

The Shunnamite woman’s longing for a son is fulfilled – and even when he is apparently cruelly taken from her, she does not despair.  Refusing to be sidetracked or distracted, she goes to the source of hope and help, determined that Elisha who foretold the son’s birth would, though God’s power, restore life to him again.  

All is well with the starving prophets whose supper had been contaminated by a toxic plant when Elisha neutralises the effect of the poison.  The feeding of the 100 from 20 loaves is a prototype of the miracles Jesus performed demonstrating God’s compassion for our frailty and his power to meet our very physical and material needs.

Claim God’s peace and steadiness today in the face of challenges, sorrows and turbulence.  Choose to trust in Jesus who says, ‘I have overcome the world’. 

Jn 16:33.    ‘Everything is alright.’

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 22nd

2 Kings 3     Daniel 7     2 Thessalonians 3     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord.’  2 Kings 3:18

Joram, son of Ahab, had had some pretty poor role models in his parents, Ahab and Jezebel, and he hasn’t quite thrown over the traces yet v1-3! His saving grace in this story is that he is not too proud to ask for help v7,9 and to act on the suggestions made to him by his fellow kings against the rebellion of the King of Moab.  However, it is only when they have reached the end of their resources, and when human wisdom and experience don’t have any answers for the desperate predicament they find themselves in, that even the godly Jehoshaphat thinks of asking the Lord, through Elisha, what his solution would be. 

In spite of Elisha’s initial (understandably) ungracious response to Ahab, he seeks for God’s guidance and comes up with an extraordinary command in the arid desert they find themselves in.  We can only imagine what the soldiers who would have done the digging would have been thinking!!  The valley was to be filled with water and Moab will also be handed over to them.  How on earth were the two to be connected?

It was indeed ‘an easy thing for the Lord’.   In ways the 3 kings could not even have begun to think of or imagine.  As the men did their part, God did his.  By the morning, the ditches were filled with water, blood-red in the sunrise, which lures the Moabites to their defeat and destruction.

Daniel’s vision reminds us of the truth that only in the ‘son of man’ – God’s messiah – is ultimate authority, glory, sovereign power – all peoples, nations and men of every language worship him; his kingdom is one which will never be destroyed; all rulers will worship and obey him.  Dan 7:14;24

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• Is there something in your life that seems overwhelming, insurmountable – possibly the result of not consulting with God or even of resisting his will? 
• Who are the godly ‘counsellors’ who will stand with you and pray with you? 
• What might God be saying in it all? 
• Are you being called to do something which may seem counter-intuitive – but which may prepare the way for God’s solution?

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 21st

2 Kings 2     Daniel 6     2 Thessalonians 2     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

Where now is the God of Elijah?  2 Kings 2:14

In our chapter from 2 Kings, we see in Elisha someone who is determined to go after God, to receive from Him everything that he could be given, and to be as effective for Him as he possibly could.  He is aware that his mentor Elijah, is about to be taken from him, but he is utterly resolved to follow in his footsteps, to receive the same power and anointing which have enabled Elijah to speak God’s word – accurately, powerfully and courageously, and to perform miraculous acts in His name.  In fact, he wants a double-portion v9. In anyone less focused on God, this would seem ambitious and arrogant in the extreme, but Elisha is simply going after God – for the glory of God – ‘to make Him famous’.  Despite being given three opportunities to opt out, v2,4,6, Elisha will not be deflected.  When the two prophets finally cross the Jordan, and Elijah asks him what he wants – Elisha does not mince his words v9,10. 

I am really disturbed at how mealy-mouthed my prayers and requests to God often are.  He invites specific prayers, especially if they are to His glory.  Matt 7:7-11. Nothing is too hard for him. Gen 18:14  He wants to equip us and He wants us to be able to live and serve him in ways which will cause others to see His Spirit ‘resting on us’ v15 – at work through us.  Actually, 2 Peter 1:3 tells us that ‘His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.’  Have we actually begun to unpack, access and plug into what we have in Christ?

We will have to practise, and use this power – be confident in God’s equipping, even if we don’t get it quite right the first time.   Richard Nelson, in his commentary, points out that the original Hebrew implies that Elisha needed two attempts to part the Jordan with the cloak he had inherited v14.  The chapter ends with a couple of examples of Elisha’s power as a prophet both for life and healing, v21 – 22 - but also for death, as he calls for the destruction of the 42 foolish young men who mocked him.  A petulant abuse of this power?

‘Where now is the God of Elijah?’  In us and with us, if we are going after him in the way Elisha did!  Let’s pray for more of God’s power – and for godly discernment as we use it to serve Him and bring Him glory.

(member of women’s ministry)

Oct 20th

2 Kings 1     Daniel 5     2 Thessalonians 1     (Click on the Reference to go to the passage)

In Daniel 5 we find another dramatic incident in the story of Daniel’s life. For me the key line in considering the story is verse 22. Here we are reminded that King Belshazzar was aware of the action described in the previous chapters. He knew that his predecessor had discovered that the Lord was the Most High God. He would have known about the men being saved from the furnace and Nebuchadnezzar being deposed. And yet he chooses to live a life of pride and arrogance rather than humility. The queen (footnotes suggest this could be translated as the queen mother) speaks up when none of the king’s wise men could translate the writing and we see that there is one person at least who remembers that Daniel had insight and wisdom beyond himself. Whether she had spoken up before or was a willing participant in the proud living of the king we don’t know.

Re-read the first part of this chapter and think about the choices that the king makes despite his knowledge of the past.

Spend some time praying that God would help you live in the light of your knowledge of him. Declare who He is; name some of His character traits. Chat to Him about what you have to do today/this week/this month. Listen to anything He wants to say to you to encourage you, guide you or challenge you. Give thanks that our knowledge of Him can be shaped not only by the works of God the Father but also by those of Jesus Christ - ‘God with us’ -  and the Holy Spirit present in us.

(member of the congregation)