“Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
May God bless you as you have a wonderful weekend and remember, just cast your cares upon Him because He really cares for you.
I want to ask you an honest question.
How is it going?
You say, “It is going a bit tough Angus.”
Yes, I understand.
My dear wife, Jill and I, are sitting at 60 days plus positive and we are still waiting for the tests to come back.
But you know something?
This morning, The Lord Jesus has reminded me that we need to comfort one another - not bring harsh words of judgment - but comfort one another.
I remember as a young farmer, on a Sunday night, I would get all the children in our pick-up.
We only had a bakkie in those days and all five of them, and Jill and I, would go into town, into the little church in the main street in town, and we would hear the Word of God preached and it would comfort us.
And when we had finished the service we would all say together, in fact, we used to sing it, the benediction, coming from the Book of Jude, only one chapter and verse 24 and 25, and this is what it says and I am reading it out of the Old King James Version:
“Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever, Amen”.
Isn’t that a wonderful comfort?
The Lord is able to keep you and me from falling, from falling away from the faith.
Jesus will do it for you.
He will keep us.
He will bring great joy to us, Jesus alone.
And He is our mediator.
He goes between us and The Father and He encourages us.
Now, is present and forever is for the future.
We really need to lift up our eyes this morning and look unto our salvation, The Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, folks, this is not a time to tell people to pull themselves together, to give them a couple of scriptures on the phone, and then pray for them.
That is not what they want.
We have a young Zulu lady on our farm.
She is in charge of growing the cabbages with her team and she does a wonderful job.
And she came up to the fence the other way and she asked Jill, “
“How are you today?”
She said, “Don’t cry. The Lord will help you. This virus will finish just now.”
Just a few comforting words.
I remember, very distinctly my foreman, Simeon Bhengu.
You know him from the movie, Faith like Potatoes, when I lost my little nephew - he fell off the tractor I was driving and he died in my arms - he came into my workshop one day and he put his arms around me and he said,
“Baba, don’t be afraid, The Lord will help you.”
Those comforting words I have never forgotten, as long as I live.
Love one another.
Put your arm around that person.
Hold them and love them.
That’s all they need.
Comfort one another because that is what Jesus said.
It’s alright to get afraid.
It’s okay to be fearful.
There is nothing wrong with that because we are faced with great challenges but you and I as Christians need to know the answer and the answer is that Jesus has promised us these things.
He said to us in John 16: 33: “I have told you these things. In me you will have peace. In this world, you will have tribulation but be of good heart for I have overcome the world.”
I have been reading through the Old Testament, the Book of Numbers, Numbers Chapter 2, where The Lord instructed Moses how to lead the children of Israel through probably the most difficult time of their lives through the desert.
I have been to that desert. There is nothing there. And yet God took a nation through a desert experience for forty years and led them and how did that happen?
It happened because there was law and order in the Israelite nation. God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to the leaders and the leaders spoke to their respective tribes.
There was order in breaking the camp down in the mornings.
They were led by a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire during the night.
You and I need to have law and order in our lives at this difficult time of the coronavirus and lockdown.
How little do we really need when it comes to material things?
Some of us are getting ulcers. We worry about something that will never happen.
He said, “I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.”
Mothers are so very, very precious in the sight of God.
I want to encourage you young men and older men, phone your mom today. Tell her that you love her.
You say, "We are on lockdown. We can't get there".
But you can phone her.
You can message her and if you can get to her, spoil her today.
We are not of those of the dust anymore. We have met The Son of God, Jesus Christ, and we are now heavenly people.
Read MoreHope is for the future. Faith is for today. I looked up in the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the word, “Hope” - A feeling of expectation and desire.
Folks, Hebrews 13 verse 5, Jesus promises us that He will never leave us and He will never forsake us. So we are not to lose hope. This hellish virus will leave us as quickly as it came. So, therefore, get prepared for the future.
Plan and pray and speak to each other about the way forward. What are you going to do once you leave your confinement and the lockdown is lifted? Well, according to the Book of Habakkuk, Chapter 2 and verse 3, this is what it says: “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, But at the end it will speak, and It will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it, Because it will surely come, It will not tarry.”
Hope is a movement.
Hope is the expectation that Jesus is not coming soon.
Read MoreThe power of confession!
We need to forgive one another so that God can heal us and set us free.
As I am talking now, I know there are some people carrying a 50kg bag of cement on their backs. They will not forgive and because of that, that unconfessed sin is weighing you down. Let us confess that sin today.
We have got lots of time to do it.
Lord, I forgive that person for the way in which they have hurt me and Lord, I ask You to forgive me for the way in which I have hurt them. And then put it behind you. Leave it there and move on for God.
If Christ is in you, you will make it.
You don’t have to be afraid.
Maybe you are in that lockdown situation where you can't get out anywhere but you need to trust in The Lord and you need to remember that this season will not last.
It is passing by as I speak to you now because Christ Jesus has promised us that He will never leave us and that He will never forsake us. You see, God is not a man like you and me.
What distinguishes a Christian from those who are in the world?
1 John 4 verse 8 says, “God is love.”
So if you don’t have any love in your heart, you don’t have God in your heart.
Another word for faith is “trust”.
It is a life that you live.
It is an act. It is not just a word. It is a lifestyle.
“My God shall supply all of my needs, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
You know, I think it is a very hurtful thing when we doubt The Lord’s provision.
Are you feeling a little lonely?
Maybe you are feeling a bit deserted.
Maybe you are in that lockdown situation where you are forced to self-isolate, like Jill and I, because you have contracted the Coronavirus.
Well, I want to tell you about a friend today who will take away all your loneliness.
A miry pit is a terrible place to be.
I have worked on many dairy farms as a young man, in Scotland, in Australia, in Zambia and a miry pit is a place where all the slurry from the dairy goes into and then eventually gets pumped out and spread on the fields as fertilizer.
And that is what I think of in my mind - a miry pit - sinking into a miry pit!
When you rest, you get refreshed. You get new ideas and you get new opportunities. Even as you leave your land fallow…
Remember, the only thing that you and I will take from this earth when we go to Heaven is our loved ones, our fellow-man, people’s souls, that’s all - nothing else.
All else will stay behind.
This is an opportunity, lockdown time, to sit down with our loved ones and remember where The Lord has brought us from…
Let us be different from the world.
Let us keep our eyes, like the fish eagle, focused on things above and not things below.
