A birth like no other

A company of pollsters discovered a number of children preparing for Christmas who had no idea whose birthday they were supposed to be celebrating. How sad.

This birth was like no other. This baby was unique. He was every bit as human as each one of us, but He was also divine. "The Word," says John in his Gospel, "became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

God knew none of us could make it to heaven on our own, so He sent Someone to make it possible for us.

You may feel almost worn out, with shopping, cleaning, cooking and wrapping presents. But do make sure that you have the eternal life He, and He alone, came to bring.

The Son of God became Son of man so that sons of men might become sons of God.

Happy Christmas.
      

Eternal life begins here

Why would a God of love send anybody to hell?

God doesn't send anybody to hell. They go because they refuse to accept God's offer of forgiveness in Christ. Many people live all their lives by their own standards. When they hear of sin and heaven and hell, they mock. All sorts of people have different ideas, they say. Who knows? Besides, nobody ever came back to tell us. (Are they sure?) 

God sent His Son to be a sacrifice for sin. Jesus was murdered. He was clearly, incontrovertibly dead. Then He came back to life. Hundreds saw Him. He ate food with His disciples. He told them "A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

He told one "Reach your finger here, and look at my hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." Jesus didn't just talk about eternal life. He demonstrated it.

The Christian who has experienced forgiveness of sins knows he is forgiven and is certain that he has a home in heaven. He has God's promise. He has a hope - not in the sense of "I hope so," but a sure hope, a certain hope. He has tasted a little bit of heaven down here. He knows that because Christ lives, he will live also.

If you don't have the assurance of sins forgiven, if you don't know you have a home in heaven, let me ask you a question in all sincerity.

Have you examined the evidence of Christ's resurrection?
  

Can anybody have written more?

Charles Wesley, one of the 19 children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, joined the Holy Club at Oxford, covenanted with the other members "to live disciplined Christian lives, given to serious study of the Bible, prayer, fasting and charitable works." He was ordained to the Anglican ministry and went as a missionary to the American state of Georgia, but came back a failure. 

While still a young man, he was taken ill and was in such extreme pain that he expected to die. He was visited by a young German Moravian missionary, Peter Boehler. Boehler (who was also largely incidental in the conversion of Charles' brother, John Wesley) asked him: "Do you hope to be saved?"

"Yes," he said. "For what reason do you hope it?" "Because I have used my best endeavours to serve God." Boehler shook his head, and said no more. "I thought him very uncharitable," wrote Charles, "saying in my heart: 'What? Are not my endeavours a sufficient ground of hope? Would he rob me of my endeavours? I have nothing else to trust to.'"

Boehler continued to visit, and to pray that Charles would again consider the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ, examine himself whether he was in the faith, and if not, "never cease seeking and longing after it" until he attained it. 

Charles' deliverance came on Pentecost Sunday that same year. He said he felt the Spirit of God striving with his spirit until by degrees the darkness of his unbelief was chased away. "I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ."

During the next 50 years, Charles wrote more than six thousand hymns. That's 120 a year; an average of one every three days. Some 250 years later, some of them are still among the nation's favourites: 

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
  Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
  I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
  I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
      

A time to live - and a time to die

Growing old has its advantages. The older you get, the more real heaven becomes.

I know that all my sins are forgiven and I have a home in heaven. Let me hasten to say that this has nothing to do with who I am or what I have done, and everything to do with what Jesus did on an old cross two thousand years ago.

Let no one think that he can get to heaven because of the good life he has lived or the good deeds he has done. If that were possible, Christ would not have needed to have died. Let no one think that salvation is automatic. Like any other gift, it has to be received.

But let no one who has believed on Christ as Saviour for his salvation doubt that Christ has paid the price in full.

There was a time in my life when heaven was something in the distant future. Having received God's forgiveness, I did not fear death, but if I am honest, I might have feared the process of dying.

No more. I realise the time will come when I no longer wish to stay here. At a moment of God's choosing, I will stop breathing and pass from here to there. I hope people won't grieve. I will be as much alive as ever I have been; in fact, more so.

The Bible doesn't tell us everything about heaven, but it tells us sufficient.

Heaven is a place of beauty. It's a place of service. A place of infinite creativity. A place of wonderful relationships. A place of surpassing joy.

"You will show me the path of life;
   In your presence is fullness of joy;
At your right hand are pleasures for evermore"  Psa 16:11.
        

The greatest victory that ever was

A few years ago, I went to a cinema to see The Passion of the Christ. It showed Jesus being tortured in terrible detail. After quite a time, it was obvious the film was coming to a close. I found myself saying to myself "Oh, please let it show the resurrection." It did, briefly. Suddenly, Jesus was standing alive in the tomb.

The crucifixion was a remarkable event. But it would have meant little without the resurrection.

The Bible records a number of times when Satan and his minions attempted to kill Jesus. Every time they failed, for it wasn't His time. Eventually, when the time did come, God handed Him over to His torturers. I imagine hordes of demons around the cross shouting "We got Him!" "We got Him!"

They were used. God used them to produce the most remarkable victory this world has ever known. When Jesus walked out of the tomb, he wasn't resuscitated, He was resurrected. Alive for ever.

He had won forgiveness, redemption, eternal life for as many as are willing to receive it. The kingdom of darkness was defeated. From now on, it would fight a rearguard action, but it would advance only by deceit. Its final overthrow is certain

Jesus Christ is King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Unto Him who hath loved us, and washed us from sin, unto Him be the glory, forever. Amen.
       

Two men: A stark choice

Tomorrow is Good Friday, when we remember how the world did its worst to the Son of God.

When Jesus was tried before Pilate, it was Passover. At Passover it was Pilate's custom to release a prisoner of the people's choice. Pilate could find no fault in Jesus, so he gave the people the choice: Barabbas, a terrorist and a robber, or Jesus.

In those days, Jews didn't have surnames as we know them. They were known as Judah son of Joseph, or Simon son of Jonah. Barabbas means "son of Abba." It can be translated  "son of the father." According to several old manuscripts, his first name was Jesus, a fairly common name in those days. So the people had to choose between Jesus, son of the father, who was a murderer, and Jesus,Son of His Heavenly Father, who came to bring life. They chose the son of Abba.

God was gracious to those people. Jesus died and rose again. So they had the opportunity to repent of their sin, believe on Jesus, and receive forgiveness

We have a somewhat similar choice. Jesus gave His life to be the one and only Saviour. Only the sacrifice of His life was good enough. He was the perfect sacrificial lamb. His blood, and only His blood, is sufficient to wash away our sin. We won't always have the choice, but we do have the choice now.

"As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." John 1:12.

Do it now.
   

A few facts and figures

The Christmas and New Year holiday seems to be time for quizzes and things. So let's have a quiz.

Here's the first question. How big is the universe? Well, consider.There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. (There are an estimated 100 to 200 billion galaxies.) The average distance of each star from its nearest neighbour is 37 trillion miles. If you were to travel through space at five miles a second, travelling 37 trillion miles would take you more than 200,000 years.

God, who created the universe, is greater than it all. (If God exists, why doesn't He reveal Himself? He has revealed Himself. He has revealed Himself, for instance, in creation. Perhaps God wants people to choose to follow Him. There is all the evidence that people need.)

How big are you and I? There are more than seven billion of us on earth at this time. Tiny specks in a vast universe. But each of us fearfully and wonderfully made. And each one of us infinitely precious.

So precious that when we went adrift, God was willing to give His own Son. Our righteousness was no longer good enough, so God allowed His Son to die so we could share His righteousness. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. If we decide to believe on Him as our Lord and Caviour.

The choice is ours.
 

Nazi SS officer's son who loves the Jews

Werner Oder was brought up in Austria. His father was an SS officer, whose job was to train einsatzgruppen, army units whose job it was to murder Jews.

"The Bible," Werner says, "says very clearly that those who curse the Jews will be cursed by God. That curse manifested itself in our life in the most terrible way. We encountered chaos in our home; anger, violence, hatred. Antisemitic language was normal.

"My life was going down the same road. I became angry, violent, very aggressive. People who just slightly offended me I calculated coolly at home how to kill them.

"A person said to me one day 'Werner, the way you're going, you have got two choices. You're either going to prison for life or you're going to hell for ever, so what are you going to do about it?'

"One night I had this terrific demonic manifestation in my life. I thought I was going to die. I cried out to God - the God who didn't exist, the God I didn't know about. I said 'God, I don't want to die. I want to live.'

"God answered. He sent me an evangelist. He told me Jesus is the Son of God, who loved me and died for me on the cross, and if I put my trust in Him He would forgive my sin and set me free from all evil. From that day on I put my trust in Jesus. I was changed."

Werner started to attend a Roman Catholic church. One Sunday morning as he sat in church, he had a revelation: Jesus is Jewish.

"I thought who is God? Do we know His name? I suddenly realised it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. God is the God of Israel.

"I realised that Jesus Christ was never His name. That's a Greek translation.

"His mother Mary was never called Mary because she was never a Catholic. She was a Jewish woman from Nazareth, who had a revelation from the angel Gabriel. who told her she had a son named Yeshua, who was to be the Saviour of the world. This was the beginning of my love for the Jewish people.

"I couldn't do anything about the people who were murdered, but I had this horror when I discovered what took place. I felt someone ought to come from the Nazi world to at least apologise. This is a very benign term - how  can you apologise? - but at least I wanted to be a friend to the Jewish people. . . "

You can see the whole of a remarkable interview here. 
      

How to get to heaven

The second chapter of Ephesians explains how to get to heaven.

Once, it says, we were all sinners, full of trespasses and sins; children of disobedience, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind; by nature children of wrath. Despite what we think, nothing to commend us at all. But God so loved us that He sent His Son to die to pay the price for our salvation.

There's nothing we can do to earn it, or make ourselves fit to receive it. Because Jesus paid the price in full, there's nothing that we can add. It's a gift. It's the product of grace - God's undeserved favour. It's received simply through faith. We need to believe it and receive it. Until we do, we don't have it.

When we come to Christ, a divine exchange takes place. He takes our sin, and gives us His righteousness. We are His workmanship, Ephesians says, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

But didn't we say there was nothing we could do? Ah, nothing we could do to add to the price He paid for our salvation. After we receive Him we will do good works. Good works are the proof of our faith.

Here's something beautiful. It says we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God doesn't just leave us hanging. He has a place for us in His kingdom. He has a plan and a purpose for our lives. There is something that only you can do, and a gift of grace for you to enable you to do it.

So how shall we know what it is that God has for us to do? William MacDonald says that in order to find out the good works that God has planned for our individual lives, we should

1. Confess and forsake sin as soon as we are conscious of it in our lives;

2. Be continually and unconditionally yielded to Him;

3. Study the word of God to discern His will, and then do whatever He tells us to do;

4. Spend time in prayer each day;

5. Seize opportunities of service as they arise;

6. Cultivate the fellowship and counsel of other Christians.

How are we doing?
   

The first Palm Sunday

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
  Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
  He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
  A colt, the foal of a donkey."

So prophesied Zechariah (in Zech 9:9).

On the first Palm Sunday, as Jesus and His disciples came to the Mount of Olives on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus sent two of His disciples into a village nearby to bring a young donkey they would find tethered there. He said "If anyone asks you 'Why are you loosing him?' say 'Because the Lord has need of him.'"

They found the donkey. As they were loosing him, the owners asked "Why are you loosing the colt?" They said "Because the Lord has need of him," and they let them go. They put their clothes on the colt, and sat Jesus on it. So Jesus fulfilled the prophecy.

A great multitude who had come to Jerusalem for the passover feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, spread their garments on the road. Others cut down branches from trees and spread them on the road. They cried "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! The King of Israel!"

The disciples were no doubt pleased to hear Jesus exalted as Messiah. But when Jesus saw Jerusalem, He wept. He knew that the leaders of Israel had already rejected Him, and He was aware of the terrible things that would happen to Jerusalem as a result.

In the next few days he was going to do something wonderful. Something that had never happened before. Something that they did not yet understand. . .  
 

Home at last

Viorel Cebotari was born in a village in Moldova. When he was two, his father committed suicide, leaving his mother to bring him up alone. She had trouble. As a teenager, Viorel was constantly in bother with the police, and frequently in and out of prison for drinking, stealing and fighting.

He married four times - and each time his wife left him. At 25, he attempted suicide by drinking poison. He was taken to hospital, and recovered.

He never thought about God until he found himself in prison after seriously injuring a man in a bar-room brawl. His cellmate, seeming to believe there might be a God, asked him questions. Viorel's mother was a teacher, and there were always books around at home, but they all said there was no God, and that we all evolved from monkeys.

Sick of living, Viorel did a deal with the God he didn't know. "If you really exist," he said, "get me out of this prison and I'll serve you."

He got out of the prison, but went back to his old ways. God reminded him of his promise, but he thought he would have to live in a monastery, and he didn't know where there were any monasteries. 

He would have to get his hands on a Bible, he thought. "I really thought it would be written in there which monastery I should go to and where I would find it."

He found a Bible and started to read. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It felt like an electric current flowing through his body. Immediately, he knew this book was like no other book.

He read on. He found a woman taken in adultery. Jesus forgave her. He found a woman who had had five husbands. Jesus accepted her. He saw the thief on the cross. His own relatives didn't want anything to do with him, but Jesus accepted them. For the first time in ages he felt hope.

He took the Bible with him everywhere he went, and would read it even when he was drunk. He realised now that what he was doing was wrong, but he couldn't stop. "How is it possible to know all this and be unable to live it?" he said.

Finally, he broke down and wept. When he stopped trying to be good in his own strength, God met him.

He looked for a church in his own village, and found four old ladies meeting in a private home. They didn't know how to talk to him, but they accepted him.

They gave out food parcels, firewood and school supplies. They started a day centre for vulnerable children. The villagers had a prejudice against evangelical believers, and they knew Viorel's record.

The grandmother and the mother of two children in the day centre were converted. Some of the parents, most of them alcoholics, now come regularly to church.

After watching him carefully, they have decided that Viorel and his friends are not a sect who want to steal and sell their children, but are truly people of God.
 

Transformed by love

What happens when a couple of lesbians go to church to cause trouble?

John Burke tells the story.

"Let's go for fun! We'll see how much we can push their buttons," said Amy. "Come on!"

Amy had been in a nine-year relationship that had broken up, leaving her wondering why her deepest longings could never be satisfied. She and Rachel had started seeing each other when they decided to attend one Sunday morning.

"I came on  a mission to shock people," says Amy. "Rachel and I would hold hands in front of people, but instead of the disgusted looks we expected, people met eyes with us and treated us like real people. So we started coming to church weekly. We kept moving to the front each week, trying to get a reaction so that we'd be rejected sooner rather than later. When we couldn't shock people, we stopped trying and started learning."

Rachel stopped attending, but Amy continued.  "I was searching for something," she says. "I definitely wasn't looking to change, but I wondered if God had answers to my deepest longings.  Problem was, I didn't trust God at all.

"The more I listened and learned about the teachings of Jesus, the more I started to actually believe that God really did love me. I heard more and more about being His masterpiece, and in time, I actually started to believe it."

She found out her father had nine affairs while she was growing up, a secret which rocked her world. She saw how the roots of her sexual issues tied together with his. She was just like him, using people to find comfort, life and love outside of God.

As time went by and she learned more of the Scriptures, she fell more and more in love with the Lord. Then she went to a seminar, and what God showed her shocked her. The speaker was talking about bullying.

She remembered a boy who had bullied her all year. Then one day, he apologised for the way he had acted, and invited her to his home. When she went round, two teenage boys were waiting. They raped her. She was nine years old.

The memory was extremely painful, but it was part of the healing process.

Seven years later, Amy leads a ministry in the church to help others find healing.

You see, you can't tell Jesus anything about yourself that He doesn't already know. He loves you. He forgave self-righteous people, adulterers and prostitutes. He wants to forgive you. 

But that's not all. He wants to transform your life into something beautiful. He wants to make you the person He intended you to be. His love can do that too.

Happy Christmas!

A Jewish girl I know of - not a practising Jew, it's true, but a girl who was well aware of her Jewishness - was challenged by the testimony of a Christian. So she bought herself a Bible.

In it, she found the following verse:

For unto us a child is born,
  Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon his shoulder.
  And his name will be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God,
  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

She had seen the verse before, on Christmas cards. She had assumed it was from the New Testament. She was shocked to find it was from the Old Testament, spoken by the prophet Isaiah some 700 years before Jesus was born - one of the many verses in the Old Testament which speak of Jesus.

For unto us a child is born, Unto us a Son is given. Not unto us a Son is born, unto us a child is given. Jesus is eternally the Son of God. How marvellous that God should present His greatest Gift in the person of a little child!

And the government will be upon his shoulder. He's coming back to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. Every eye will see Him. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess Him Lord.

Wonderful. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Counsellor. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Mighty God. He was there at Creation. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not made any thing that was made.

Everlasting Father. Jesus said I and my Father are one. Prince of Peace. When He comes, He will rule with a rod of iron, and people will not learn war any more.

In the meantime, you can recognise Him for who He is, and ask Him into your heart. He will come in, and you will know Him personally in a way that's hard to imagine if you haven't done it. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.  John 1:12.

May you have a happy, blessed, Christ-filled Christmas.

The story of Jonathan and Dora

Jonathan and Dora McLeod met in 2003 and fell in love. But things didn't go the way they were supposed to. . . 

Jonathan suffered from anger. It expressed itself not only in fighting in the ring, but in bare-knuckle fighting. He developed a severe addiction to painkillers. One day he decided he couldn't take it any more and attempted suicide.

After a week or two in hospital, he was placed in a mental institution. When he was released from there, he still suffered from depression.

Watch as Jonathan and Dora tell the story of what happened to them on video. You can see the video here.

For God so loved the world

When man sinned, God had a problem. God is not only love, God is also just. He has to punish sin. We are all sinners. We have all done things we shouldn't have done, and not done things we should have done.

God's infinite justice demands that He punish our sin. God's infinite love wants to find a way to avoid punishing us. The only way round the impasse would be to find someone who was without sin who would take our punishment for us. Someone who voluntarily chose to do that.

That someone was Jesus, who came down from heaven, lived a life that was without sin, then allowed His life to be taken in your place and mine.

 The greatest fallacy that man believes is that he is good enough to be forgiven - good enough to get to heaven. That if he does enough good deeds, the bad deeds will be overlooked, and he will somehow be allowed in. It isn't true. If man has sinned against an eternal God, he deserves eternal punishment. Heaven is perfect. Heaven is where God is.

 Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). That's because it's true.

If it were possible to get to heaven by any way other than by trusting Jesus, then God had Him die for nothing.

But here's the thing. God loves us so much that He won't force us to accept Christ. Despite all that it cost, He holds out the offer, but gives us the right to refuse.

The choice is yours - and mine.

Because He lives. . .

The work that Christ did at His crucifixion wouldn't have been complete if it hadn't been for His resurrection. He didn't just die for my sins; He rose from the dead for my justification.

And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it.

His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.

And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.

But the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified.

"He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay." Matt 28:2 - 6. 

Christ's resurrection is one of the best attested facts in history. He appeared a number of times to His disciples. One one occasion, He appeared to 500 people at once.

(You don't believe in Christ's physical resurrection? Have you examined the evidence?)

He ate food with His disciples. He showed them His hands and His feet. "Handle Me and see," He said, "for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

There's a beautiful song, written a few years ago, about Christ's resurrection that goes something like this: 

Go ahead, drive those nails in My hands;
Laugh at Me where you stand.
Go ahead, and say it isn't Me;
The day will come when you will see.

'Cause I'll rise again;
There's no power on earth can tie Me down.
Yes I'll rise again;
Death can't keep Me in the ground. 

The wonderful thing is that because my Redeemer was resurrected, one day I will be resurrected too. Not to condemnation, but to the same eternal life that He has. 

Go ahead, and mock My name;
My love for you is still the same.
Go ahead and bury me;
But soon I will be free.

'Cause I'll rise again,
There's no power on earth can tie Me down.
Yes I'll rise again;
Death can't keep me in the ground.

 Jesus said He would rise from the dead. And He did it. He also promised He would come again for His people. He will do that too.

One day, the Bible says, the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of a trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise, then those believers in Christ who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. "And so," says the Scripture, "shall we ever be with the Lord."

Go ahead, and say I'm dead and gone;
But you will see that you were wrong.
Go ahead, try to hide the Son;
But all will see that I'm the One.

'Cause I'll come again;
There's no power on earth can keep Me back.
Yes I'll come again;
Come to take My people back.

What a day! What a prospect!

History's greatest victory

When Adam and Eve disobeyed in the Garden, it didn't take God by surprise. Right then and there He promised a Saviour.

He told the serpent:

I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise his heel.  Gen 3:15.

The seed of the woman, you will notice. Not the seed of the man. Jesus was to have no earthly father.

From the moment the promise was given, the powers of evil in this world did everything they knew to stop it being fulfilled. They sought to destroy the line from which the Saviour would come.

Cain was persuaded to kill Abel. There was an attempt to prevent Abraham from having a legitimate heir. Pharaoh ordered the death of all male Hebrew children. There were attempts to kill all the children in the royal line. Haman sought to kill all the Jews in the captivity. Herod killed all the young children in Bethlehem. There were attempts on Jesus' life in Nazareth, and on Galilee.

Finally, the Jewish religious leaders plotted His death. Judas agreed to give Him up. Pilate was persuaded to condemn Him.

It's not hard to imagine a colossal number of demons gathered around the cross. Did they say "We've got Him!" as the soldiers hammered the nails through His hands?  Did they say "We've won!" as Jesus gave His last cry and yielded up His spirit?

If they did, they were going to be disappointed.

As we shall consider in the next several days, what appeared to be the greatest defeat in history was about to become history's greatest victory.

The man who wanted to fly

From being a boy, Larry Walters dreamed of going up into the clear blue sky in a balloon. Years went by, but he never lost his dream.

One day, he decided to do something about it. He went to an army surplus stores and bought more than 40 seven-foot wide weather balloons and some tanks of helium. He fastened the balloons to an aluminium garden chair and tethered the chair by two nylon leads to a car in his girlfriend's back yard.

His aim was to go a few hundred feet up, sit and admire the view for an hour or two, then shoot out one or two of the balloons and drift back to the ground.

He packed some peanut butter sandwiches, a large bottle of pop, a CB radio and a pellet gun. He sat in the chair. Friends unfastened one of the leads and the other came loose. The contraption shot up like a rocket, so fast that he lost his glasses.

Up and up it went, until Walters was three miles above the earth. He tried shooting out one or two of the balloons, but lost his gun overboard. He drifted into the incoming flight path at Los Angeles International Airport. A Trans World Airlines pilot and a Delta Airlines pilot saw a man and some balloons floating past at 16,000 feet.

After a very scary time, the flying chair drifted back to earth and Walters was able to get off unhurt. Unfortunately, the balloons tangled with some power lines on the way down and plunged a neighbourhood into darkness.

Asked in a newspaper interview later why he did what he did, Walters is reported to have replied "Well, you can't just sit there."

You know, he's right. Life is short, and time is passing at a surprising rate. Life is over almost before you know it. Then each one of us will have to stand before our Maker.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.  2 Cor 5:10.

Most people imagine they will go to heaven, but the truth is that heaven is perfect, and we are all sinners, if only because we haven't given God His rightful place in our lives.

God has provided for the situation. His only Son lived a perfect life and died an agonising death to pay for your sin and mine.

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  Isa 53:6.

But God forces His forgiveness on no one. We need to believe on Him, and accept His offer of salvation. Tell Him you're sorry for the wrong things you've done. Ask His forgiveness. Invite Him to come in to your life. Tell Him you'll give Him control of your life, and you'll follow Him.

Don't put it off. Do it now, while you have the opportunity.

'Waiting for Jesus'

Frances Ridley Havergal was born in Worcestershire in 1836. She was the youngest of six children of an evangelical Anglican clergyman, himself the author of about a hundred hymns.

Frances could read at three years old, and wrote her first poetry at seven. From six years old, she longed to find forgiveness in Christ, but it was only at 14 that she found peace in Him. "I committed my soul to the Saviour," she said, "and earth and heaven seemed brighter from that moment."

Although not able to go to school for long periods, she was proficient in several modern languages, as well as Latin, Hebrew and Greek. She was a sweet singer and a gifted pianist, playing Handel, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, often from memory.

By the time she was 22, she had learned the Psalms, the book of Isaiah and almost all the New Testament off by heart. She went on to memorise the Minor Prophets. (Do they make Christians like that any more?)

Whilst in Germany, she saw a picture of Christ during His passion, bearing the inscription "I did this for thee; what hast thou done for Me?" It appears to have made a considerable impression.

Despite long periods of illness, Frances wrote books, articles, poetry, a considerable number of hymns - some of them well known - and a number of hymn tunes.

She died of peritonitis at 42 years old.

At the beginning of her last illness, she asked her doctor "Do you think I have a chance of going? If I am going, it is too good to be true!"

Towards the end of that last illness, although in agonising pain, "It is all perfect peace," she said. "I am only waiting for Jesus to take me in."

Clearly, though faintly, she sang the whole verse of one of her hymns. She looked up steadfastly, her face radiant, as though she saw the Lord. For 10 minutes, said her sister, the family watched her almost visible meeting with her King.

She tried to sing again, but after one sweet high note, her voice failed and she was gone.

Her favourite bit of Scripture, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin," was inscribed on her coffin and on her gravestone.

May I be allowed to ask you a question? It's the same question she was faced with. He died for you. What have you done for Him?

Fried chicken, anyone?

Col Harland David Sanders opened a service station and started to serve ham and steaks cooked in his home nearby. (This is the man with the glasses and goatee beard. Kentucky Fried Chicken. That Col Sanders.)

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952. The company grew until the colonel was unable to manage its growth. He sold it for £1.5 million in 1964.

Now his face appears in 17,000 towns and cities in 105 countries. The company sells 114 million hot wings each year in Britain alone.

One night an American preacher knelt beside the colonel and asked: "Would you like to get born again?" "I really would," said the colonel. "Do you think that Jesus could save me to the point where He would take away my cussing?" "God is going to save you tonight," said the preacher, "and you'll never cuss again."

Col Sanders accepted Christ that night and never again took the Lord's name in vain. He was baptised in the River Jordan.

According to a biography written by Bob Rodgers, the preacher's son, the colonel was once needing surgery for a growth in the colon. The same preacher went to the hospital and prayed for him. When the surgeon operated, there was no growth there.

"God has been so good to me," said Col Sanders.

He died in 1980, aged 90.