Tag: Weekly 2017

(1) Am I a Soldier of the Cross?

A Painful Memory
Isaac Watts had painful memories of his early years. His parents were dissenters, people whose religious affiliation was outside of the Church of England, the state church. Dissenters often suffered persecution in the seventeenth century.

His father, a deacon in a Congregation Church, was arrested and imprisoned several times. When Isaac was an infant, his mother would sit on a stone opposite the jail and nurse her baby while visiting her husband. Fifteen years later, the Toleration Act of 1689 granted freedom of worship for Dissenters. Isaac was old enough then to remember the persecution when religious freedom was denied.

On Friendship

Proverbs 17:17 A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Are you sometimes sad and lonely because you think you have no friends? Do you often wish you could enjoy yourself as do others in the company of dear friends, without that wall which seems to keep people away? Anyone with a heart full of friendship has a hard time finding enemies.

Consider this statement: “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity. (George Washington 1732-1799).

If you are lonely for the joys of true friendship, then here is glad news. God wants you to know the joys of true friendship! His Book shows you the road to friendship if you will only walk in it.

King Solomon made this observation in his old age, Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Do you not remember the wonderful passage described by the disciple John? In that passage, Jesus placed the friendship as the highest gift He could give to His disciples. They had undergone trial and tribulation with Jesus. And He turned to them and gave to them the highest earthly honour He could bestow:

John 15:12-15 “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

The way of the Golden Rule had made them the friends of Jesus. And that way, faithfully followed by you, can take you, a sometimes lonely, unhappy, friendless man or woman, and transform you into a happy, joyous child of God with faithful friends on every side.