Exhortations for The Soul

About three years ago I was involved in a session with a Pastor in Georgia and his spiritual daughter in Canada discussing this very topic - Holiness, Living our Lives for Christ.   It was very impactful and I thank God for every person who spoke powerfully and genuinely into my life. It has made me a better person and helped me to dig deeper into the Word of God for myself. It’s amazing how God works eh, and I am just grateful that for me, it has never been about personalities when it comes to my soul salvation. Because as much as someone is learned in the scriptures, you don’t know their heart, only God does. And the other thing is, they don’t have a heaven to put you in.   So I would encourage each of us to take the Word of God seriously. No being totally dependent on any one person or ministry to feed you, and no lip service when it comes to serving God. No being empty vessels, or no pretending.   Rather, if we claim to be Christians, we must search the scriptures for...

For us as followers of Jesus Christ, today, Monday, we are continuing to bask in the glory of the entire Easter weekend. If at all we take the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ seriously, we should be in a state today where we are experiencing rebirth and renewal. Amen?! The Easter weekend, including the Good Friday and Easter Monday observed as holidays in some places, originated as a Christian observance. However, as with most things, it became perverted with worldly traditions of secular festivals, as we had here in the BVI for example. But might I suggest, that for us as Christians, Easter must remain a symbol of our core belief, which emphasises the redemption and salvation offered through Jesus’ sacrifice and victory over death.   So Easter must be a time for reflection, renewal, and celebration of this extremely important event - the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. These central events are recorded, as we know, in the New Testa...

Jesus was full of compassion for you and me when He went all the way to Calvary to die for our sins so that we can live. He did so even before we were thought of by our parents.   There are many instances in the Bible where we see Jesus displaying compassion. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and welcomed the outcasts. He didn't care whether people were white or black, rich or poor, popular or unpopular, His disciples or not. His compassion knew no bounds. So we want to be like Jesus and show compassion right? Then it’s like this…and I must admit, while some have the gift of compassion, this has to grow on some of us.   So what does it look like?   If I have compassion for you, I would find myself doing things whether I feel like or not, because I would be allowing Jesus to work through me.   If I have compassion for you, it means I am seeing what you’re not saying. I would walk in your shoes, lend a helping hand, give a listening ear, or offer my shoulder for you ...

When I was growing up, Holy Week was a most solemn and sad occasion. The focus seemed to me to be more on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I can understand this to be the case for those living in the time of the early Roman Empire when Jesus was crucified. In that time, around the 1st century AD, between 30-33 AD,   the end of the Second Temple period in Jewish history. Why? Because they did not know how the story would end.   So indeed, for those followers of Jesus Christ, they couldn’t understand why a man who went around doing only good, was being slaughtered. I can imagine how much they felt His pain. The Bible tells us in Matthew 26 : 36 - 39 NLT version: ”Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He ...