Nikka

The condition for the promise of God meeting all our needs is, that we become cheerful givers. The promise in 3 parts: And my God; will meet all your needs; according to hos glorious riches in Christ Jesus. The limit? The extend to which God will meet our needs is relative to the scale of his bank account, not ours!. This promise means that when we get to heaven, we will be able to put pour rewards at Jesus' feet in the form of crowns: The crown of righteousness: 2 Tim. 4:6-8 The crown of life: James 1:12 The crown of glory: 1 Peter 5: 2-4 The crown of the imperishable: 1 Cor. 9:24-27 What a glorious day that will be!!!

All through the Gospels we read that it is more blessed to given than receive. The key is to give cheerfully, not only monetary but also of your time and resources. If we give to receive something in return, it is considered a duty rather than a gift. God "gave" His Son because He loved us.....just think about it if God did this to receive something in return from us, then it surely would not have been an act of love but duty. We need to see it the same way. Paul obviously understood this fact and because the Philippian Church gave so much to Paul, Paul knew that they were filling their heavenly account, their treasures in Heaven. So, give cheerfully without expecting anything in return.

Paul lives for His redeemer, his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He learned to be content, that the outward rewards (e.g.wealth) doesn't mean anything. He had so much happen to him, that he learned to be content to be alive and to work for His Master. That is contentment, nothing else matters. Once we understand, that we only live here on earth for a whisk of time (100 years??) as compared to eternity, nothing matters. So , should we not focus, like Paul on the eternal treasures??? Contentment does not undermine ambition, far from it. Because of this revelation, we are much more eager to be ambitious for the cause of Christ, to bring the Gospel to the people around us. I have learned through study and understanding and knowledge, what is important in life. Nothing matters at all, only Christ. We cannot be anything else but content. We have Christ, what more do we want?

It seems that the modern trend of ministries, these days has to do with "living an abundant" life. It seems they take one verse out of the Bible (John 10:10) to tell us that God want us to have an abundant life. There is a constant demand for money, because if we don't give, we will become poor. It seems that God blesses us through abundance and when you are poor God is obviously not blessing you. Totally devastating in my belief. Paul tells us to praise God at all times, in abundance AND also when in need or being poor. Money doesn't mean anything to GOd, the heart is what counts.

Every thought, positive or negative starts in the mind. Paul wrote to the Romans (Rom.12:2) "be transformed by the renewing of your mind". Let God change you! God will help you to renew your mind. If we think positively all the time, (sometimes not easy but with effort it can be achieved) the brain cells will change in your favor and it is the beginning of the renewing of your mind. Put a BIG STOP to any negative thought, stop it before it takes root, before satan has the power to keep you in the negative, in the lie.

A relationship is never a one-way street, it is a two-way street. How can we communicate with God by "asking","begging" and not listen? No father will give his child everything he asks for, it always takes 2 people to discuss something or ask for favor. If we don't listen to God's answer, we will never have peace of our mind because we will always doubt if God actually heard us. God gives us peace of mind as soon as we connect with Him. Peace in this world starts with each individual. If we don't have peace of mind, the world will not know peace either. Peace can be achieved, definitely, if we start with our-self first and reach out to others and show them how they also can achieve peace. It is such a treasure to have peace of mind. It is a free gift and God is waiting to give it to us freely. Just trust Him.

When we pray and petition for a specific issue, we need to thank God already for the fact that He has answered our prayer. It is an act of faith to say "thanks" in advance. It shows that you trust God for answering your prayer as you thank Him in advance. Prayer is a 2-way conversation, be quiet and listen to His answer and then thank Him

Rejoicing is action. It is not a feeling. I have learned if I don't feel like rejoicing, I start acting as if I am rejoicing and it suddenly spills over in rejoicing. It is totally a revelation if you understand this. Try it and it will give you a whole new outlook in life and it become a real habit.

To make disciples and followers of Christ, it is important to keep on confirming we are citizens of His Kingdom. People need to see our allegiance and trust in Jesus, it's the only way to reach people for Christ and discipleship. We keep our eyes on Jesus (Peter did when he walked on the water Matt.14:27-30) to make sure Satan has no entry into our mind and take us off course. I believe the church pulpit is not a place for politics. We need to be proud of the country we live in, but our ultimate citizenship is Heaven. Let's focus on that and if we don't, we risk to have to close the door of our churches.

Paul was unshakable in his faith for Jesus. He just LOVED His savior. When you have that kind of love, you can't stop talking about it and urge others to do the same. It became part of his life and it can be part of our life. People need to see and experience our example of service and want to have what we have.

I was a teen when I got the call to serve this Jesus. There was a period when I was busy raising children and working that Jesus "seemed" more distant, but even then, reading my Bible and teaching my sons was important. I had many experiences of Jesus being very close. I can honestly say that I have "seen" and heard Him so clearly. I have heard His voice and I know I am in the race and will persevere to the end. I have been really blessed in my life and I thank God daily for His blessings and His favor. I love my Lord! I had a new call about 7 months ago and I am just so happy that God uses me to promote His Kingdom.

We need to be diligent to focus on Christ. Like everyone else, many things happen in our lives that we need to forgive and I have been able to forgive. My goal is to be unoffendable, so you forgive as you go along. Not easy at times and it's only with GOd's help that we can forgive.

During WWII, I started to understand "faith" through my parents. their faith was unshakable and that's why I am alive today. My relationship with God is very personal. I speak to God all day long, through mini-prayers. I love my Lord and I totally agree with Paul: To live is Christ, to die is gain (Phil.1:21). I am not morbid, I love life. There is so much to do. The harvest is so huge and I try to convey my feelings about Christ to everyone I meet. I surely am a Jesus follower.

If we believe in righteousness through the law, we are in bondage. It means that we have to do good and follow the law to be righteous, so we become righteous through works of our own doing. Righteousness through faith, is, after confessing our sins and accepting Christ as our Savior, believing that He died for our sins, we become righteous by the shed blood on the Cross. We cannot become righteous on our own deeds; Jesus came to abolish the law, He fulfilled the law, therefore, we have been saved by grace, by His love for us. It may be difficult to understand for a new believer, or sometimes even for older believers, because of our upbringing, we have tunnel vision. We go by what we were taught. We need to study and through study this becomes very clear. It will also be difficult to understand if we trust a legalistic church or belong to a legalistic church. It is difficult for the one who is "stuck" through old beliefs. We need to renew our mind and then it all becomes clear. I know I am righteous by faith. Abraham was righteous by faith. The law was not established in his time. (Romans 4:4; Genesis 15:6)

Compared to the grace of God, everything in this world is meaningless. We seem to forget that this world belongs to God. He created us because He loved us and wanted us, everything else is rubbish. Compared to others, my upbringing was good, filled with the love of God and servitude to our "neighbor". But did I understand it then? NO. It is during our journey that we see the grace of God and revel in it more and more. Nothing is important, except God. To live is Christ, to die is gain! (Phil.1:21) Paul isn't boasting about his past, and ride on these coat-tails. He makes us understand that our past doesn't mean anything; today is what counts, how we live and how we can glorify God

Until we understand the workings of the Holy Spirit, I am sure we all struggled with this confidence. Confidence in the flesh is not talked about in the churches much, or in mine. It can be a confusing statement until we learn about it through the Gospels and the Epistles. I believe we are making progress in that area, I surely hope so.

Like every church in this world, there is dissension and "fault finding" among the members. We need to remember, there was no synagogue, the population was under Roman law and for the majority,the citizens were retired Roman soldiers. The Gospel was something very new in Philippi and because of Paul, they had to learn to accept the fellow members as "brothers in Christ", "fellow workers", "fellow soldiers", "Messengers" and "Ministers". Paul is telling the Philippian Church to look at Timothy and to emulate His character and devotion. People like Epaphroditus, have been taught the Gospel and how to serve and be a slave, and so he is trying to make them understand the role of a Christian and follower of Christ. We need to honor our leaders in the churches, and distant ones we hear about or meet. They have a story to tell and we can learn from them, mostly positive lessons but we also need to discern the negative motives of these men. Let's not chastise them or judge, God forbid!

No job is menial in my life, especially because I serve Jesus. Even as a slave it is an honor and privilege to serve Him. That He accepted me in His fold, is totally awesome and I am so blessed and honored that He called me to do His work even at this late stage of my life. Age is no barrier at all to serve, and I am very active in my daily life. I live in an apartment block and I see a fabulous harvest every day and everywhere I go. I shine for my Lord and I am humble enough to say that people flock towards me. They tell me that my face shines. (I wasn't aware of that) I am by no means bragging because God made me for who I am, as He doesn't make junk, I am confident that I have been chosen by Him to do what I am doing, serving, bringing messages and starting a Bible study group next month. I am so excited! I am not looking at what other people should be doing, I do what I am offered to do for my Lord and Savior.

My father had a strong faith. Going through WWII with a young family, I have dozens of examples of getting us through this war unscathed, because of his strong faith. Then I had a Pastor, mentor, Dr. William Thomas, a Swiss mentor and co-founder of the faculty of theology in Brussels. I accompanied him many times to the lectures with his wife. Then I went on to Switzerland and was mentored by the Director of the Methodist Hospital where I was a student nurse. In the past 25 years I was mentored by my pastor in Ontario and now in Winnipeg. .It has been an ongoing journey. Our church builds leaders and I would say that we have committed leaders and they are building them from the ground up.

This is the first century church. The Gospel is VERY new and it takes time to build leaders, selfless leaders at that. So it is understandable that at that time there wouldn't have been very many selfless leaders. Today after 2000 years, it still isn't all that easy to find sincere church leaders, although after all this time, many have come and gone. I was introduced to "serving" selflessly at an early age, through my parents' upbringing and my former Pastor. My career falls in the category of serving and being concerned about the people around me and I just LOVE to live for Christ. I am still on a journey even being an octogenarian and I know that God is still molding me and is not finished with me. I love to learn more and more and cherish my Bible and my God. Just 10 years ago He urged me to go back to college and take a 2 year Bible course, followed by a 2 year leadership course. It has been fenominal.

When you go through insurmountably struggles, it looks like everything is fallen apart. But, keeping your eyes glued on Jesus gets you through the situation, no matter how hard or impossible it looks. When you look back onto this event, you can see God's Glory. To grow in the Spirit, you need to have this experience of a "drink offering". The harder the struggle, the more glory comes to God. The praises are a way to say "thank you God" for this struggle. Keep the faith, keep going, you will see later that this drink was necessary.

We need to hold on for dear life (literally) to the Word of God, the LIVING word. It is very sad to see that so few people don't seem to understand how important it is to keep a hold on the living truth. If we don't don't, eventually it will all water down and nothing much will be left of it. Paul is concerned about this fact already in the first century. Let us all help to keep the truth in front of us, to hold on fast and bring it forth into the world. We better understand this as a Church. Jesus wants to come back, His second coming, to a strong church, His bride, not a wimpy one, or a weak church, one without a backbone. We have to keep up the fight of the living Word, lest we forget even more of it, than what has been lost already in the past few decades. It looks like things are going downhill, but we need to keep the Word alive, and hold onto it with a strong fist.

Every generation believes that they are living in darkness. It seems though that the world gets darker as time goes by. As Christians, because we know the truth, we do (or should) shine. As we no longer conform to the "rules" of worldly living, people experience something different in Christians who sincerely live in love and as peace-makers. Actually it is not difficult to shine like a star in a dark sky. People living in darkness, want to have what you have and become shining stars themselves. It is a great way to show the Gospel to people. Each individual needs to do his/her share to become shining lights. We need to encourage each other to live a Godly life.

We are saved by grace. Salvation is ours but we need to work at it so that we "change", accomplish the fruit of our actions. This means, we need to work on love, 2-fold- accept the love of Christ and develop love for our environment. When we look at the cross, there are 2 beams. The vertical beam, is the love of God to us. The horizontal beam is the love we have to show to the people around us. If one beam is missing then we do not have the cross. We need to sow peace by accepting people for who they . Again, when we look at the 2 beams of the cross, God accepted "whosoever believes in me" (John 3 :16). He accepts everyone. But we also need to accept people horizontally. Harmony in the Spirit is also reaching the spiritual realm and encourage people to understand this spiritual realm. When this happens, harmony is a sure consequence. We were all born sinners, but because of our salvation, sin is no longer held against us. Jesus died on the cross for our sins and daily we are forgiven for our sins through our prayers. Because of our salvation, we strife to live a perfect life, as Jesus was perfect.

God will exalt us. He promised He will in Matthew 18:4 "whoever", includes all of us who obey God and humbles him/herself. It is a fact and a promise and we know for a fact that we can trust the Word. God doesn't lie, so whatever He says we can go by it as a fact. We need to serve the Lord and exalt Him with looking for a reward. We should not do ti to get a reward but because we love Him from the heart. We will see our reward in Heaven. Some of us may become impatient when we see the world around us and it "looks like" that people who do not accept Jesus as their Savior "appear" to be better off, and we need to keep going back to the living Word all the time to keep our courage up and to keep going on this journey, the "race" . We will get the crown of righteousness and when we focus on that daily, we will not get discouraged.