Matt 11: 29
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Jesus is speaking to the crowd of common people who are familiar with the everyday life of farmers. He made an invitation for them to shake his yoke. This here is a picture of a yoke being shared by two oxen pulling the plough, the purpose of which was to plough the fields. This means that the oxen were labouring in the fields.

The lesson here is that there are two oxen, one is a mature and strong oxen and the other a younger and weaker oxen. The older oxen is teaching the younger the skills needed for the work and the older oxen is stronger and therefore takes most of the weight.

Jesus is making an allegory of us sharing the task of the work in the kingdom and that He is by our side and is willing to work alongside us. When we do that, Jesus does most of the work and our task will be easy and light.

We acknowledge that by ourselves, we can do very little but when we have the benefit of working alongside Jesus and the Holy Spirit then we become the passenger and they become the driver. The Holy Spirit will lead and see us through whatever difficulties we may encounter and He will make the way straight before us.

In Roms 8: 26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our infirmities; foe we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered. This speaks of the difficult times when we are weighted down and do not know what we can do, but the Holy Spirit will help intercede for us with groans and words that are in spiritual languages.

This is a clear example of what God continues to do for us, He knows our weaknesses and He never abandon us but He will support and care for us all the time.

Job 37:16
Do you know how the clouds hang poised?

We are in the midst of winter in the southern hemisphere and just this morning as we were preparing to get ready to leave the house we saw wisp of water vapour flying pass and rising in the air. This was the phenomenon of water vapour that was rising to the sky. Ordinarily we would not have seen this with the naked eye but because the weather was so cold, we could just see a wonder of nature occurring before our eyes.

The writer of the book of Job asked, do you know how clouds are formed and hung in the sky. In ancient times, the knowledge of the people were limited and they could not understand the working of the evaporation process which sends up water vapour to the sky forming the different types of clouds.

Today with science discovery, we know how this works. However the wonder is how God put all these into His creation that through this cycle, God provides rain to fall from the vapour that has risen to form clouds and when they have become dense, the vapour will principate and fall to the earth as rain, watering the soil and providing life to both plants and animal life.

This is the miracle of God that what He had created millions of years ago has never changed and is still working in perfection. This speaks to us about the perfect God who is unchangeable. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His words are eternal and His promises are also eternal.

The plan of salvation that He had given to all men is perfect, there is not prequalification that men need to prepare. All that is neededis that man repent from their sins and accept His Son Jesus to be his Lord and Saviour, then the repentant man will receive forgiveness and eternal life.

God had made it so simple; all that man has to do is to respond to His invitation to accept His Son as their saviour.

1 Cor 15: 58

Nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

The devil is the accuser of the brethren and he will do his best to accuse us that we are useless and unable to do the works of God. He is s successful that many believers are paralyzed into thinking that they are useless and cannot do much for God and once with this thought in their minds, they are afraid to even try to do anything for Him.

The word of scriptures are clear to us, if the men do not rise up, then God will use the ladies and if the ladies do not rise up, then God will use the little children. In this aspect, we have seen that in the persecuted countries where all the full time workers have been martyred, imprisoned or deported then we see that God raised up the youth to do the work.

In China, we hear of testimonies of teenagers who have rise

n up to lead the Church. In the absence of older full time workers who have been  removed by the authorities, these youth who have no bible school training but who are trained by the Holy Spirit are not only leading several Churches at one time but they are going round teaching, praying for the sick and even raising the dead.

Their relationship with God is so strong that they are fearless and are ready to lay down their lives for God. They spend long hours in prayer and they can hear clearly from the Holy Spirit and are totally obedient. They are like the believers in the NT churches.

Even among the tribal believers, I have seen the same in the different countries that I have ministered in. High up in the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal, I had the privilege to teach and guide these youth workers. Even in the jungle Churches of South East Asia, I was also privileged to teach the youths who are so committed to the Lord.

Today God is still raising younger children and preparing them for the work of the Kingdom. When the next wave of revival comes, we need to mobilize a young army of spiritual warriors, we must encourage and train them now. This is our responsibilities as leaders, we must know the plans of God and be able to do whatever is needed.

2 Chrons 6 :13-14
Solomon knelt in front of the entire community of Israel and lifted his hands toward heaven and he prayed.

This verse described the posture which Solomon took when he led the nation of Israel to dedicate the temple to God. They had spent many years to build it and God had promised that He would come and dwell in it and be among them. The posture for prayer is not as important as the attitude of our hearts.

The posture is to enable us to fully concentrate and focus on worshiping God. Like Solomon who went on his knees, this kept him lowly and disabled him to move about and when he stretched out his hands towards heaven, it is a posture of total surrender to God. This posture of humility helps us to concentrate on our worship.

Though this is important, our attitude and total surrender of our hearts during worship is more important. Our hearts must be believing in everything that we seek God for, our praises and worship must be pure and sincere. When we sing or when we praise God, every word must be genuine and we must mean it.

Our prayers, our heart and our mind cannot be out of focus. We cannot and must not be praying with our lips but in our heart and mind they are distracted by other thoughts. Imagine when we have a conversation with a customer or our boss; we will be fully focused on every word that we speak would be clear and committed.

If we can do this with man, how much more we must do the same with God. This is what scriptures tell us, “We must love our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind.” Worship must be total concentration and commitment of our body, soul and spirit. This is what God desires from us and it is our duty to dedicate our all to Him.

We must surrender our all to God every time and at all times.

Acts 8: 34The Ethiopian asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?

We read that at that particular time, a great persecution broke out in Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. Many of the believers fled from Jerusalem and Philip was among the group that fled into Samaria where he proclaimed the gospel.

While he was there, the Holy Spirit sent Philip on a special mission to the desert road. In obedience Philip went out there not knowing what to expect. Normally a desert road would be quite deserted and there would hardly be anyone on it. To his surprise, Philip saw an Ethiopian eunuch from the royal Ethiopian court who was trying to read and understand the scriptures from the book of Isaiah.

The Holy Spirit had directed Philip to go to the isolated road in the desert to help a young believer to understand the scriptures. God works in mysterious ways and He led Philip to minister to a young believer. Today we know that the Holy Spirit is our guide and counselor who lead us and teach us all things.

The gospel is always spread by personal testimonies and through the word of mouth. The gospel was spread in the old days through the believers who were driven out of Jerusalem and they traveled far and wide bringing the gospel to every nation and every tribe in the then known world.

Today, God is still sending out his servants to preach the good news of salvation, He is still calling men and women to rise up and go to the uttermost parts of the world to preach the good news.

This week I met a couple, who is working with the Christian organization ‘Youth, with a mission,’ in Thailand. They are there for the last 20 years working among the non believers and they have brought many souls to the Lord.

Today the Christian world owes their salvation to the efforts of Christian evangelists who came from the western countries bearing the good news. Now it’s our turn to bring the gospel to others who are unsaved in the world. We need to pay this gospel debt for our salvation, as others have saved us, we now need to save others in turn.

Psalm 47:6Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.

The psalmist who wrote this psalm is already enjoying the personal relationship with God on a daily basis where he is continually praising and worshiping God. His life is engrossed in praising and worshiping God all the time.

We can imagine that he is a worshiper and there is constant praises upon his lips throughout the day. It is a natural thing for him to worship God and he is telling others around him to do the same. In today’s text we see the psalmist encouraging all believers to sing praise to God and to offer worship to Him.

Praising and worshiping God is our privilege and honor. Only people who know our God can worship Him, non-believers who do not know God personally cannot come and worship God. They do not have a personal understanding of who God is. Only we who have received Jesus Christ as our Savior will know the way to reach out to God.

Since we are His children and we have the free access to Him at any time, then it is our responsibility to seek Him and worship Him. Paul knew that this is our requirement and he also teaches us in Eph 5:19  Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; 

There is power in praise and worship, the bible tells us that God in the past had taught His people to march into battle not with sword and spears but with worship. In the battle for the city of Jericho, God asked that the Levites march around the city with their shofars and worship God each day for seven days. On the seventh day they were to march and shot to God and we read that God brought the walls of Jericho down and gave victory to the Israelite. 

Similarly when king Jehoshaphat went out to battle against his enemies, God gave instructions that the priests are to go ahead and praise and worship God along the way. The priest sang hymns and played music in honor and worship to God and as they march into the battle field, God caused the enemy camp to be confused and they fought and killed each other.

King Jehoshaphat and the army of Israel did not have to do any fighting. There is power in praise and worship. We also know that when we enter into spiritual warfare, we need to worship as well and as we do that the enemies would be defeated. The demons will have to flee, this we have seen and experienced as we do spiritual warfare.

Therefore the people of God must learn to be dedicated and committed worshipers. If we want to see breakthrough and victory in our own spiritual walk with God, we first must build our prayer life and worship God habitually. 

Hebs 8: 12

I will remember their sins no more.

This book of Hebrews was written to the group of Jewish believers as earlier in this chapter, the writer relates the past promises of God to the nation of Israel and the law which were given through Moses.

The write said that this was the old covenant which required sacrifices and rituals, now God has brought in the New Covenant which was instituted through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, on the cross. The writer explains that the past sacrifices were inadequate to remove the sins of the people.

Therefore God had to bring into operation His perfect plan of making the perfect sacrifice which is to offer His Son who is without sin. This was the supreme sacrifice which satisfied all the requirements of God and then after there was no further need to make anymore sacrifices.

The writer of Hebrews tell us that God now puts the scriptures into our hearts and minds which will through the power of the Holy spirit guide and lead us in our walk with him and as we do that God will delight in our allegiance and obedience and he will remember our sins no more.

This is our blessing and privilege that we can constantly come before the Lord and seek His mercy and grace asking for His forgiveness for every sin that we commit both knowingly or unknowingly. There are many times in our lives that we are careless and fall into sin. All these must be repented and God will hear our prayers and will surely forgives us as His word has said so.