Yesterday in Germany 200 restaurant patrons witnessed a shocking event. The dinner show featured 5 Bengal tigers. Their trainer “lost concentration” and they started to eat him. The owners made two interesting comments: “After all they are tigers. The show will go on because that’s what Christian (the trainer’s name) would have wanted.” I suspect that Christian, as he was lying in hospital in a critical condition, is more likely to want not to have been attacked.

People also have a base nature. Sin prowls just below the surface of our lives. Naturally it can spring forth without much notice. God places His Spirit within us when we become a Christian to wage war against our nature and to guide us to better decisions. Each day we must recognize the temptations we encounter and call upon God’s strength to resist. We can’t afford to lose concentration or relax our vigilance because by nature we will tend towards pleasing ourselves not God.

OPEN HEARTS TO OPEN OPPORTUNITIES.

Next week we are inviting you to respond to God’s goodness in your life with a generous thanksgiving offering. Please take the opportunity to consider what God has done for you in 2009 and help us take God to even more people in 2010.

Stephen Semenchuk
Senior Minister