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| Rev. Brian Wilkie |
By Rev. Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, August 21st, 2016:
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Broadcast Notes:
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Welcome to Good News In the Morning, a program of words and music bringing a Christian message of hope and encouragement to those who are looking for intelligent meaningful and spirited approach to faith and to life.
This program is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian church in Rockland. As always I want to start by thanking you, our listeners. We are very grateful for your encouragement and support. Please remember that you can always visit our website for materials to encourage and support you in your Christian walk. If you miss an episode of the show you can go to our website, download the podcast MP3 of our broadcast and listen to it there. Details can be found on our website www.gncm.ca (GoodNewsChristianMinistries.ca).
This morning’s sponsor Sandy Davidson wants to call out a salute to Christian Counseling Ottawa (or CCO), which is a registered charity that has been healing hearts and homes in the Ottawa area for over 40 years. Thank you, Sandy, for your sponsorship of this program and for your appreciation of that other Christian Ministry, Christian Counseling Ottawa, that has been serving us so well.
“Cambodia is for Christ!”
Today as I speak to you I speak as someone who has recently returned from a mission trip to Cambodia and had a really wonderful experience there with a team of people from Redeemer Alliance Church in Orleans. The scripture I want to share with you and the message I want to share are connected to that trip to Cambodia. This scripture is from Isaiah 55 verses 1 to 7: Isaiah 55:1–7 (NIV)
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander of the peoples.
Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations that do not know you will hasten to you,
because of the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”
Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
This is the word of the prophet Isaiah spoken hundreds of years before Jesus came and offered the Gospel to the whole earth. Even in this prophecy, the people of Israel are promised that nations they don’t even know will hasten to them because of t he Lord their God.
We’ll take a further look at that passage, and the experience that I've had in Cambodia in a few moments but first I'd like you to listen with me to the song called This is My Father's World sung by Mark Schultz from his album simply titled Hymns.
It’s one of the fundamental principles of our faith that “the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.” The whole earth is made by God, The universe is made by God. There may be debates in Christian circles about how that creation happened and how long it took, but the ultimate truth is that God is the creator of all things. The Earth is not divided into territories that belong to different gods, there is but one true God and He, the Lord and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; - The Father, Son and Holy Spirit - this is the one God who rules all the Earth and who reaches out to save the whole earth. So when Isaiah was speaking in the in the passage that I just read earlier, he was speaking to the people of Israel and reminding them that they needed to turn to the true God. When he speaks about being thirsty, and people buying bread that doesn't satisfy, he was not really talking about the material needs of the people of Israel, he was speaking about the way they were turning to idols and false gods. They were spending their energy devoting themselves to things that were not God, that could not help them. He encourages them to eat what is good, “your soul will delight in the richest of fare”.
So he is saying to a people of Israel who had gone astray from the worship of the true God that they know I could turn back to him, the true God, that they could turn back to him and be satisfied.
Not only that he goes on and says, “I've made your King David a witness to all peoples!” So Nations that you don't know will come looking for the God which you are now worshipping! This Promise is not just Israel that there's a bread, a spiritual bread, that will satisfy, but it's to the whole world.
Well, in the first part of the month of July, I was in Cambodia with a team of 10 people, 5 of them were youth, and 5 of them were adults and we went to a help with a program, which the Cambodian Missionary Alliance Church is carrying on year after year, of teaching English to students of all ages and primarily students from rural areas; both in the churches in the rural areas and as those students start to go to college and so on in the larger cities the church is providing a dormitory for them so they can afford to go and get an education and build a hope for them and their families, and also in those dormitories teaching them English during the year. During the summer Christians from all parts of the world, (primarily North America) come into these situations to the help the students to practice conversational English, helping to teach them the principles of speaking English in an understandable and fluent way. It's really wonderful, even though we're only there for a short time, to be able to contribute to the long-term work of the Cambodian Church.
The amazing thing is to see the gospel at work lives of all kinds of people when you're on a short-term mission trip and it's something that I do highly recommend to Christians, to get a chance to see how the gospel is is being lived out in so many parts of the world.
When you go on one of these short-term trips you see people who have embraced the Gospel, and who are pursuing the gospel. You see in this case the Cambodian Christians, the Cambodian pastors, missionaries from all kinds of places and your own team. People from your own community, and people from other North American communities coming for a short time. All of their lives are filled with the testimony of the difference that God makes; of the way that God satisfied their deepest need; of the way he fed them with his Word and the way he satisfied their thirst, refreshing them with his grace and his love.
In Cambodia, we are looking at a country that went through some very difficult times in its recent history. Back in the 1970s a leader named Pol Pot came and ran a very tyrannical reign over the people, driving them out of the cities, killing anybody who had an education because he was afraid that educated people would be able to rally the people in opposition to what he was doing. He was returning people to what he considered to be their agrarian roots, but he was sending them out without tools, without Learning, and without understanding. So many people died just from being driven into situations they couldn't take, couldn't survive, and so many people were killed.
In the Cambodian Church in which I was serving it was pointed out to me by another member of another team who had been there a few times - he pointed out a family that had from California. They were descendants of a fellow who had been killed in The Killing Fields of Cambodia. Their grandfather had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. At that same table was another person who survived the Khmer Rouge - a pastor who had had been taken when he was a child, before he was even a Christian,; Taken as a child with his village out to a field where a big pit had been dug and every one of them was hit in the back of the head with an axe, and fell into the grave that had been dug for them. He didn't die; he regained consciousness, and crawled out from among the bodies of his village and escaped into the forest. He had lived a life of great bitterness and anger and hatred until the gospel of Christ came and began to heal him and turn him into the person and the pastor that he is today. Yet another person at that same table had been a General in the Khmer Rouge until Christ grasped his life turned him around, caused him to repent of his evil and start serving the Lord. Can you imagine those three groups sitting at a table together: a former Khmer Rouge General, a Survivor of the atrocities and the children of someone who have been murdered by the Khmer Rouge? All reconciled by God because of Jesus Christ. The Gospel works! The Gospel, the word of God, the good news of Salvation changes people's lives. It heals people of the injuries they suffered, turns people from the evil they have done, and causes people to forgive as they themselves have been forgiven. How wonderful and glorious just to see so many people that have been turned around in dramatic ways. Those testimonies were also true of some of the people who were missionaries, who were coming from other countries to help the Cambodian Church. They were people who have gone through the same kind of struggles that all Christians go through: trying to discern what God wanted them to do with their lives; trying to understand how to overcome their own insecurities and their weaknesses; how to see that they could be used by God in a powerful way and after going through all those struggles here they were in Cambodia making a difference in people’s lives.
It was very beautiful to be in Cambodia, to see the rice paddies and the agriculture to see the industry going on it's wonderful see how that country is recovering.
Do you know in the past 20 years that country has seen the gospel grow immensely? Twenty years ago, one half of 1% of Cambodians were Christians. Today 2% are Christians. That may seem like a small change, but that's doubling the church every 10 years for the last two decades. That's an amazing testimony to the power of the Gospel to reach people who very much needed help and direction in their lives. People who are serving the church there now, Cambodians who have come to Christ are now reaching out to their neighbors. Not just with the gospel, but also with programs like this English program, and computer skills programs to help children have an opportunity to have a future that is in a good industry, in a good job - because so many of the rural Cambodians, as they grow up migrate to the cities and enter into the sex trade simply because they know no other way for them to be able to support their families back home. Now they have options because the church is reaching out with their love and compassion. It's beautiful to see and this is the work not of some external organization but is the Cambodian Christians themselves who have called upon other Christians in other parts of the world to help them meet the need that they have seen and they have discerned in the Spirit and the Word of God.
It's been a wonderful experience there and I want to speak about that some more, yet I do want to have you listen to another song that speaks about the power of God's love. This one's a song by Carolyn Arends from her album Seize the Day, and it's simply titled “The Power of Love”
For me the experience of seeing God's power to save was just incredible, going to Cambodia this past month, but God’s power to save isn't limited to mission fields in far-off and Beyond! Even the scripture which we read this morning from Isaiah was not God speaking to the far-off Nations to come to him and receive the blessings of God, but it was to his own people, people who probably thought themselves to be doing quite well. He was reminding them of the importance of turning to him, turning to God find the peace and the grace and the satisfaction that only God salvation can give.
So we we are invited by the scripture to ask ourselves what are we spending all our time on? Are we spending on our labor and effort on things that do not satisfy? What takes up our day? What takes up our moments? God invites us to spend our day pursuing him and doing his will, seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness. He invites us to do this because he knows that we this is what we were made for: The righteousness of God, which involves not simply personal Purity but also serving your neighbors, loving your enemies, helping strangers, finding ways to show a listing of God to others in practical ways and of course to pursue God through his word and through prayer. To spend that time asking the questions of God that you so often ask yourself sometimes.
In fact, I was recently talking to someone whose prayer was a very formal kind of exercise where he prayed The Lord's Prayer and some Graces and evening prayers that he had learned. I found out that there was some concern in his life, about the things he was going through, but his prayer life didn't have any way of expressing that.
So I encouraged him to look at the Psalms and see how the Psalmists sought God even when they were angry, even when they were frustrated with trying, and when they were doubtful about God. They knew that the only one who could meet their need was God and so, even though they were feeling out of sorts in their spiritual life, they still cried out and were honest with God about the emotions and the difficulties they were facing. In every Psalm they come to a place where they realize that God is listening, God hears their complaint and their cry and that God is a God who is able to help them.
We are called to come to God and He offers us this blessing He doesn't threaten in this passage he doesn't, in his passage, give dire warnings. Instead he says, “Are you thirsty? Come to the well! Are you hungry come to me! Are you are you laboring and heavy-laden?” just as our Lord Jesus says later in his ministry, “if you're weary and heavy-laden Laden come to me and I will give you rest.”
And so this word that I've seen to be true in my own life, that I’ve seen to be true in my ministry here in Rockland and other parts of Canada, and which I’ve seen again to be true in Cambodia - this gospel, this truth - that God will meet our needs, our spiritual needs, is again offered to all of us in Jesus name.
Let's turn to God in prayer and ask him for help in this area.
Almighty God, if we've been drinking from fountains that don't give clean water, if we've been eating food that doesn’t satisfy, if we've been pursuing other goals and purposes in life, hoping to make ourselves happy, but if we've been neglecting you, we confessed that and we repent and turn away from that. Help us now to pursue you again, to find the water that truly quenches thirst, to find the bread that truly satisfies our need. It is you, Jesus, you are the True Vine, you are the true bread of life and to you we turn in our need. Thank you, Lord that you receive all who come to you. That all who call upon your name are saved: that if we confess with our mouth and believe in our hearts then we are saved. Glory be to your name, in Jesus name we pray, Amen
Now once again I want to thank you our listeners for your encouragement support. We thank you because you keep us on air week by week. You keep us on air with your prayers, with your words of encouragement, with your support. We do want to encourage you to support our ministry financially. Good News Ministry has only one major cost and that's the cost of this broadcast. The hosts are volunteers and so are the people who take care of our website, organize our events and operate our board. Your gift can help us continue to meet that one vital expense of the radio broadcast. That enables us to reach you and over 7,000 listeners in the Ottawa River Valley. If you can, please make a check payable to Good News Christian Ministries and send it to Post Office Box 184 Rideau Ferry Ontario K0G 1W0 and we will be happy to send you a receipt at income tax time.
I also want to encourage you to tell others about this program.
Be sure to worship in a church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out with compassion, integrity and resolve. Now to conclude our program I would like to have you listen to a song called How majestic is your name performed by Marantha Music from their 1990s Worship Album
I do pray that the Lord will hold your heart and you would know Jesus personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart, may the heavenly Father surround you with his constant and abiding and accompanying love.
Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk Radio 580 CFRA.
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's Christian Community, Rockland, Ontario
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/45207/good_news_223_aug21.mp3
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