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Text Box: WHICH WORLD IS YOUR FOCUS? HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THE ANSWER GOD MAKES TO YOUR PRAYERS? Hear our prayers, O Lord, and enlighten the darkness of our minds by your coming on earth: Ps 79:2,3,2 Thou that sittest upon the cherubims, shine forth. Give ear, O thou that rulest Israel: thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep. Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasses. Stir up thy might, and come to save us. This is what was prayed, and it also is what happened. God came and saved us. But it seems that most of us are like a person who is walking on the shore of a lake, and carrying a large sum of money in his hands. He becomes stuck in the mud on the shore of the lake. The water begins to rise and the person is in danger of drowning. He calls for help, and someone comes to rescue him, throwing to him a rope with a loop in it. All he has to do is put the rope over his head and under his arms, and his rescuer will pull him to safety - but to handle the rope the person in danger must first drop the money he has in his hands. Is the money in your hands more important to you than being rescued? Would you rather be poor and live, or hold on to the money and drown and have the money be washed away? We all know this world and its things are very temporary, and that the next world and its things are totally permanent. But which world is our focus? The treasury which God has opened for each of us is the treasury of His Own Heart. Its riches are His very essence. He offers to fill us to complete capacity with Himself, and to instantly and forever expand and increase that capacity and to continually and instantly fill that increased capacity

Text Box: with Himself - with that which is the most valuable and desirable. There is an elderly lady who recently celebrated her one hundred and first birthday. She really wanted to have a party, and she did. All of her descendants to the fourth generation were there. She can purchase anything which can be bought, but the one thing which she desired could not be purchased - the physical presence of her family. And she received that present. (She did like the candy made of strings of orange flavored jelly covered with dark chocolate.) We are about to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. We will celebrate the birthday of the answer to all of our prayers, the fulfillment of all of our hopes. Ask yourself and answer these questions. What gift will you bring to His birthday celebration? Will you even attend? How do you respond to the answer God makes to your prayer? Ref: Philipp 4:4-7; John 1:19-28 +

Text Box: LEARN FROM THE SAINTS IN WAYS YOU NEVER ANTICIPATED All of creation had looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, the Saviour of all the world - even Satan awaited His coming, but for reasons different from those of mankind. Very few people knew what the Messiah would really do, or why He was really coming. And while everyone knew it was the most important thing which would occur in the history of mankind, very few people contemplated His coming to any extent. And when He came, and redeemed mankind through His offering of Himself to His Father for our sins, very few people accepted the fullness of His gift, for it did not correlate with the glory and majesty they deemed appropriate for the most significant occurrence in history. And to this very day, most people are just like Saint Thomas the Apostle was before he saw the risen Christ. Most people, even those who call themselves Christians, simply do not accept the magnitude of what has been wrought for them by Christ who is God and the Son of the living God. Most people accept only their own concept of Christ, and of God, and their concept is no different than a carving of wood covered with gold and unable to do anything. Yet most people worship this, their idol god, a god made in their own image and likeness - a wooden, gaudily gold covered piece of uselessness. When Saint Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” he was not only acknowledging Christ’s identity; he was also acknowledging that he comprehended the enormity of what Our Lord had done for us. He was acknowledging the comprehension that his own concept of the majesty and glory which accompanied the Messiah had no place in the actuality of the Messiah. He was rejecting the idol he had worshiped, and accepted the true identity and purpose of the Messiah in the humble form which is the reality in which Our Lord presented Himself to

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