Sower of Good Seeds

The sower sows the word. Mark 4: 14

God gives us many opportunities to be sowers of good seeds. 

Whatever good seeds that we sow will create a fresh season for another person. 

When we sow prayers, someone's situation is changed. 

When we sow faith, someone is healed. 

When we sow kindness, someone's life is transformed. 

When we sow finance, someone's bondage is broken. 

When we sow the Gospel, someone is saved. 

Be a sower of good seeds and watch the harvest multiplies in God's kingdom.

Rev Albert Kang

When God Changes Your Plan!

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” – Jeremiah 29:11

In March 2001, Sujo John and his wife Mary left their native India to work in New York City. One day, Sujo remembers reflecting on his life: “I made my way to my office and as I sat on my chair I started reflecting on God’s goodness on our lives. He had blessed us with good jobs and now we were expecting our first child. Everything seemed to be going well. However, I began to feel a deep sense of emptiness in my life. I knew there was a call of God upon my life but I was not doing anything about it. I decided to write an email to a friend at my church telling him how I felt and how I was looking for purpose in life. I let go of that email at 8:05 am from my office. Little did I know how the next few moments would change us forever.” That day was September 11, 2001.

Sujo worked on the North Tower of the World Trade Center and Mary worked on the South Tower. Miraculously, the Lord spared both Sujo and Mary that day as they called out to Him.

Since that fateful day, Sujo and Mary have traveled the world sharing their incredible story of survival.  They have a full-time ministry of evangelism, compassion and church planting.

"God has taken us to more than 400 cities around the world where I've travelled with the greatest story ever told for God who offers his un-conditional, irrational love upon His people," said Sujo.

God’s plans are far greater than any plans we may have for ourselves. Today in prayer, praise the Lord and look to Him for the wonderful plans He has for your life.

"God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him." - John Owen

God’s Word: “Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.” – Psalms 40:5

By Peter Kennedy,

For detailed story: http://www.cbn.com/700club/guests/bios/Sujo-John-091010.aspx

Lawyers Say The Dumbest Things

The following questions from lawyers were taken from official records nationwide in USA:

1. Was that the same nose you broke as a child?

2. Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?

3. Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, 'I have to kill you because you can identify me.'
Q: Did he kill you?

4. Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?

5. The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

6. Were you alone or by yourself?

7. How long have you been a French Canadian?

8. Do you have children or anything of that kind?

9. Q: I show you exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture?
A: That's me.
Q: Were you present when that picture was taken?

10. Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?

11. Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

12. Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are now?
A: I'll be three months on November 8.
Q: Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?
A: Yes
Q: What were you doing at the time?

13. Q: Mrs. Jones, do you believe you are emotionally stable?
A: I used to be.
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?

14. So you were gone until you returned?

15. Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None
Q: Were there girls?

16. You don't know what it was, and you don't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?

17. Q: You say that the stairs went down to the basement?
A: Yes
Q: And these stairs, did they go up also?

18. Q: Have you lived in this town all your life?
A: Not yet.

19. A Texas attorney, realizing he was on the verge of unleashing a stupid question, interrupted himself and said, "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question."

20. Q: Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Edington at the Rose Chapel?
A: It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Edington was dead at the time, is that correct?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy!

Eating Like A Horse

A certain man had invited the pastor and his wife for dinner, and it was little Joey's job to set the table.

 

But when it came time to eat, Joey's mother said with surprise, "Why didn't you give Mrs. Brown a knife and fork dear?"

"I didn't think I needed to," as everyone listened as Joey explained, "I heard Daddy say she always eats like a horse."

The Master in the Masterpiece

One of Denmark’s leading sculptors had a burning ambition to create the greatest statue of Jesus ever made. He began by shaping a clay model of a triumphant, regal figure. The head was thrown back and the arms were upraised in a gesture of great majesty. It was his conception of Christ the King: Strong, Dominant. 

"This will be my masterpiece," he said, on the day the model was completed. But, during the night a heavy fog rolled into the area and sea-spray seeped through a partially opened window of the artist’s ocean-side studio. 

The moisture affected the shape of the model so that when the artist returned to the studio in the morning, he was shocked to find a wounded figure. The droplets of moisture that had formed on the statue created the illusion of bleeding. The head had drooped. The facial expression had been transformed from severity to compassion. And the arms had dropped into an attitude of welcome. 

The artist stared at the figure, agonizing over the time wasted and the need to begin all over again. But something came over him to change his mood. He began to see that this image of Christ was the truer one. Then he wrote at the base of the newly-shaped figure: "Come unto Me!"

‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ These gracious words of Christ might have been spoken yesterday or today–so true are they to the deepest need of our anxious times when so many broken and despairing voices murmur through the world.

Adolf Clarenbach - First Among Reformation Martyrs

Adolf Clarenbach

When Luther sparked church reformation in Germany, there was bound to be a backlash. In those intolerant days, when church and state acted together, there was no choice in matters of faith. Someone had to be the first to die for the new ideas. One of the first two martyrs was Adolf Clarenbach.


Around 1520, Adolf Clarenbach became a teacher in a cathedral Latin school. Evidently he was a better than ordinary teacher, for in 1523 he was made principle of the city school in Wesel. But storm clouds loomed. Through reading Erasmus and Martin Luther and studying the Bible, he became a follower of the Reformation.


When his views became known, he was forced to leave Wesel. Adolf then preached in Cologne and the Rhine country, forming communities of evangelical believers.


Returning home in 1528, Adolf returned to his death. At the urging of Catholic leaders, he was arrested at Cologne on this day, April 3, 1528. He was charged with teaching Protestant ideas. Also arrested was Adolf's friend John Klopreis. About that same time authorities arrested yet another Reformation preacher, Peter Fliesteden. Klopreis managed to escape, but Adolf and Peter remained in custody.


The two were held in prison for several months and tortured. When questioned, Adolf insisted that "there is no satisfaction for sin except the death of Christ alone." However, good works witness that we have the faith we claim.


On September 28, 1529, Adolf and Peter were handed over to secular authorities at the gates of Cologne to be burned to death. The long delay between Clarenbach's arrest and death is owing to the fact that three jurisdictions had a stake in his trial. Furthermore, the local citizens were upset with the sentence and had to be pacified. When plague visited the city, the superstitious people took it as a sign that they were being too kind to the heretics and public opinion swung against the prisoners.


Adolf and Peter have been called the first martyrs of the Reformation. However, it is not clear if they were Lutherans or not. But three hundred years after their deaths, Lutheran Germans of the lower Rhine honored them with a special celebration and erected a monument in their honor.


Bibliography:


Clarenbach, Adolf. Kirchenlexikon. http://www.kirchen-lexikon.de
Schaff, Phillip. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1951.
Various other internet articles.
Last updated June, 2007

The God Who Hung on the Cross

A painting, by a survivor, Vann Nath, on how Cambodians were killed at the pit.

In her book The God Who Hung on the Cross, journalist Ellen Vaughn retells a gripping story of how the Gospel came to a small village in Cambodia. In September 1999 Pastor Tuy Seng (not his real name) traveled to Kampong Thom Province in northern Cambodia. Throughout that isolated area, most villagers had cast their lot with Buddhism or spiritism. Christianity was virtually unheard of.

But much to Seng's surprise, when he arrived in one small, rural village the people warmly embraced him and his message about Jesus. When he asked the villagers about their openness to the gospel, an old woman shuffled forward, bowed, and grasped Seng's hands as she said, "We have been waiting for you for twenty years." And then she told him the story of the mysterious God who had hung on the cross.

In the 1970s the Khmer Rouge, the brutal, Communist-led regime, took over Cambodia, destroying everything in its path. When the soldiers finally descended on this rural, northern village in 1979, they immediately rounded up the villagers and forced them to start digging their own graves. After the villagers had finished digging, they prepared themselves to die. Some screamed to Buddha, others screamed to demon spirits or to their ancestors.

One of the women started to cry for help based on a childhood memory—a story her mother told her about a God who had hung on a cross. The woman prayed to that unknown God on a cross. Surely, if this God had known suffering, he would have compassion on their plight.

Suddenly, her solitary cry became one great wail as the entire village started praying to the God who had suffered and hung on a cross. As they continued facing their own graves, the wailing slowly turned to a quiet crying. There was an eerie silence in the muggy jungle air. Slowly, as they dared to turn around and face their captors, they discovered that the soldiers were gone. 

As the old woman finished telling this story, she told Pastor Seng that ever since that humid day from 20 years ago the villagers had been waiting, waiting for someone to come and share the rest of the story about the God who had hung on a cross.

Doris I. Rosser & Ellen Vaughn, The God Who Hung on the Cross (Zondervan, 2003), pp. 35-37

OCTOBER BABY - THE STORY OF AN ABORTION SURVIVOR

OCTOBER BABY - THE STORY OF AN ABORTION SURVIVOR

Gianna Jessen

Gianna Jessen survived an abortion nearly 35 years ago. She was only two pounds when she was born with Cerebral Palsy, and doctors said she would never be able to hold up her head, crawl or walk. But she overcame all these obstacles. 

Then one day she met her birth mom, who had tried to abort her but she had survived that saline attempt. The bitterness, however, lived on. Strangely, it was the mother who was bitter. 

She told Jessen, “You are an embarrassment to me!” 

Jessen was so hurt by those biting words that greeted her from her birth mother. 

Fighting back the tears, Jessen regained her composure just long enough to tell her mother: “I forgive you.”

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” her birth mom responded. “I don’t want you to talk to me.”

And just like that, the conversation was over. Jessen has not seen her birth mother since. 

She could have chosen to be furious with her birth mother but she decided not to hold a grudge.

“There was so much anger on her side,” Jessen said.

Instead, she decided to forgive, just as she has been forgiven by her heavenly Father: “Over and over, I’ve chosen to let the Lord define me,” she said. “The Lord spoke to me, ‘You have to let it go.’”

By age 3, she was able to walk with the help of leg braces and a walker and by age 28—April 30, 2005—Jessen completed her first marathon (Boston), then ran another one (London) the following April.

For Jessen, it’s been a long journey: “When your father and mother forsake you, God takes you up.”

Sources: http://charismanews.com/culture/33049-the-story-behind-october-baby

http://www.giannajessen.com/main/index.html