Along with her deep faith, the captioned phrase was a key factor in driving Francis Cabrini to accomplish all that she was able to do in her life.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were three Israelite teenagers among many others, who were in captivity and serving as slaves to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. They were probably somewhat better off than some other captives because they had been chosen for leadership positions in the kingdom.

Two events in my life motivated me to pray that God would allow me to have a role in spreading his good news to the generations to come.

Sometimes people are drawn to church as is the situation in one of our praise reports today. More often attending church for the first time can be an intimidating experience. A person who attended a church for the first time recently was asked how he enjoyed the service. HIs response was:

"I did not know any of the songs"

" I did not get much out of what the speaker said"

At first glance we may assume that C. T. Studd is referring to work in Christian ministry. This would be far from the truth. In the very beginning God created work for Adam to do and it brought God glory when Adam cared for the garden. Regardless of what our life work is it can be done for self gratification and personal success or it can be done for the glory of Jesus Christ.

The Scripture reference today was the core verse that inspired Sabine Barrington Gould to write Onward Christian Soldiers in 1865. This hymn was written in 15 minutes and he later lamented:

"It was written in great haste, and I am afraid that some of the lines are faulty."

Smells have a powerful impact on us. My grandmother grew geraniums and she had a lot of them. I remember all the window sills in her house filled with potted geraniums. Even now some seventy years past my first memory of my grandmother, the smell of geraniums remind me of her.

My best guess is that most Jesus followers do not share their faith with other people who do not know Jesus. There are probably several reasons for this. Most likely one of the big impediments to sharing is highlighted in a situation I wrote about last week. You may recall the story I told about a lady who made contact with a Hindu lady who had a dream about Jesus. The Jesus follower openly admitted that she had been in church all her life and did not know what to say to the Hindu lady who was seeking to know more about Jesus.

When Jesus made his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey colt, He threw the whole city into turmoil. Some people were praising him by calling out; "Hosanna to the Son of David." The religious leaders were aghast that Jesus accepted praise that belonged to God alone. The merchants had their work day cut short when He drove them out of the temple. Other people came for healing and Jesus healed them all.

In context, the captioned Scripture references people who have embraced the message of salvation through Christ or have been discipled through John's ministry. However, it also aptly applies to parents who are disciples of Jesus. Every Jesus follower, who is also a parent, experiences an incomparable joy when their children become Jesus followers and more so when they continue to live as disciples into adulthood. Furthermore, I am certain heaven is consistently bombarded with prayers by parents for children who are not following the ways of Jesus.

Grace is a very complex concept and not a natural posture for most of us. God is full of grace. He first of all gives general grace to all people everywhere. There is a predictability to his grace by the rising and the setting of the sun and the seasons of the year. The bible tells us the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. Everyone is treated the same when it comes to common grace.

In the captioned Scripture verse above, Paul is referencing his fellow Israelites who claim passionate allegiance to God but they are opposing other people who also express their faith in the same God. These other people are Christians who are being persecuted and in some cases put to death. Paul had previously been among those who were full of zeal for God but he was either misinformed or refused to believe that God was in their midst in the person of Jesus Christ. I wonder if he was thinking about his own journey to faith:

A student of respected teacher Gamaliel, in Jewish law

A pharisee

Condoned the death of Philip, the first Christian martyr

A well known persecutor of the early Christ followers

A dramatic encounter with Jesus while traveling to Damascus