There are two points which are integral in understanding what Easter means for Christians.

The blood of Jesus Christ was shed to free humanity: The blood of Jesus Christ is the blood that frees us from the curse over Adam’s sin.  It is the blood that allows us to enter the new covenant with God and it is the blood that permits us to receive the heritage promised to our father Abraham.

Jesus Christ’s victory over death: After Jesus Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice and gave his life on the cross, he went to the tomb to defeat death for us.  After three days in the tomb, Jesus Christ rose up from death. What this now means for us all, is that anyone confessing Jesus Christ will also have victory over death and receive eternal life.

What do these two points mean for Christians?  Put simply, they concern our deliverance, and this Easter we would like to take the example of Mary Magdalene in the following passage, to see what role we all have in our own deliverance.

John 20:1-17

The Empty Tomb

¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ²So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

³So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹⁰Then the disciples went back to their homes, ¹¹but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹²and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

¹⁷Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Mary Magdalene was someone who followed Jesus and worshipped him without hesitation.  She loved Jesus and he knew that.  Her deliverance began when Jesus drove seven demons out of her (Luke 8:2).  After this, she did not return to her past life as a prostitute, she did not fall back to her old ways and was confident in her faith.

The life of Mary Magdalene is a clear example of the two basic steps to the deliverance of any person.

1. Jesus Christ is the first step to deliverance – Confessing the blood of Jesus Christ and acknowledging him as our Lord and saviour.  Prayer from God’s servants is also included in this first step.
2. The second step is our own part in the deliverance – Like Mary Magdalene, we shall follow Jesus-Christ, love him and attach ourselves to the truth that is the Bible, the Word of God.  With all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our spirit.

Yes, we believe that LOVE is the greatest gift we can give to people who care about us and people we care about.

With LOVE you will assume your personality, your feelings and weaknesses and stop the feeling of frustration and incoherence that you always had when Christmas time came and you had to buy presents for family members or friends you suspected not to being on your side or even understand you.
With a kind of hypocrisy you made it to take part in the family reunion but it was only your body sitting with the people while your thoughts were accusing them and checking any suspect word to get your needed proof. 

By joining, it won’t be the same again: when you put your name on the list of ‘Hands together in Prayer’  Spiritual Leaders and anonymous persons are supporting you day and night to overcome the frustrations and blockages that spared your family from LOVE. With these prayers and actions you will plant true LOVE in your Family. That’s why we call our program ‘Hands together in prayer for more LOVE in every family’. Join the program as ambassador of your family and observe how you make LOVE grow in your Family. 

Click here to join

I do not pretend to call myself a Pastor because I know the Bible inside out and can quote endless passages from memory. I confess that there is not much special about me, I am no historian and I don’t know Hebrew. But, as the Lord said to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.

Then Paul said, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

May God bless you all.

Pastor Sara

The House of Lords this week resisted pressure from the House of Commons to remove a clarifying clause, introduced by former Home Secretary Lord Waddington, to preserve freedom of speech as part of the ban on incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual conduct.

The clause maintains that discussion and criticism of sexual conduct is not, in itself, tantamount to inciting hatred. 

Although the Government had whipped MPs to take the clause out, the House of Lords voted again by a substantial majority to keep it in and the Government reluctantly accepted their decision. 

Don Horrocks, Head of Public Affairs at the Alliance , gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Committee in 2007, at the start of the lengthy parliamentary process relating to this Bill.

He argued that while incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation was clearly unacceptable, the law needed to clarify exactly what type of speech was allowed without creating a climate of fear of investigation or prosecution.

Dr Horrocks said in response to the Government’s decision: “We’re very grateful and relieved. This debate is, and always was, about one thing – free speech.

“We are delighted that Parliament has recognised the need to ensure that, while the evils of incitement to hatred are effectively tackled, society continues to place a high value on freedom of speech.”

He added: “The clause means police will be able to deal effectively with unacceptable hate incidents without coming under pressure to investigate and pursue trivial or malicious allegations against people who are engaging in legitimate debate.

“Freedom of expression is a fundamental civil liberty, present in the world’s leading human rights declarations. Free speech is central to democracy, academia and other fields which require the exchange and testing of ideas. In particular, Christians rely on this liberty to be able to freely preach the Gospel.”

Simon Calvert, Deputy Director (Public Affairs) at The Christian Institute, called it a “victory for common sense”.

He said: “After many well known cases involving heavy handed policing of Christians, Parliament has decided to protect free speech.

“The free speech clause simply makes clear that which the Government has always accepted – that criticism of homosexual conduct is not, in itself, a crime. Surely that is a reasonable safeguard in any democratic society that cares about freedom of expression. This is a victory for common sense.”

pakistanchristian.tv

As a result, most Christians strive to live in the world, but not of the world, because we believe God wants us to transform the kingdom of this earth to be more like the kingdom of heaven.

It has been said that some Christians are so worldly that they are of no heavenly good, but there are others who are so heavenly that they are of no earthly good. We are to avoid these extremes.

We are to walk to the beat of a different drummer. Someone greater than us is in control of our lives. We are to strive to live lives worthy of God’s praise and that glorify God. We are to be different people because in Christ all things become new.

We see life differently. We strive to love others and ourselves with the same unconditional love that God has for us.

We are called to be different in that Christians focus on truths that provide meaning and joy to life. We focus on the resurrection and not the grave. Hate shall not have the last word: love will.

The Apostle Peter states in his first epistle that holy living means exercising self-discipline in all we choose to do, actively showing love to others as God loves us and anchoring our hopes in what God has done, is doing and promises to do.

A difficult assignment? You better believe it, but we have the Holy Spirit to help us.

DR. GENE NORRIS IS A PRESBYTERIAN PASTOR.  

She had been sent to the church by her relatives after they heard about Prophet Michael Osei, founder and leader of the church and his miraculous encounters with witches and wizards.

They had the conviction that the man of God could help their child to get rid of her witchcraft.

Olivia had told her parents (the father and a step-mother) that she was forced to send her mother (now deceased) to a witches camp where she was slaughtered for a feast.

“They gave my mother’s heart to me to eat and our queen witch feasted on my mother’s head as our culture demands,” she told the stunned congregation.

Earlier, Olivia had confessed that she was given the witchcraft spirit by her paternal grandmother at the age of five.

“I personally did not like the witchcraft and I fell sick often, so l told my mother about it. She did not believe me and warned me not to mention it again saying that it was not possible.

“Again, I persisted in encouraging my mother to take me to a powerful man of God to exorcise me but she refused to do anything about it until I turned 15, by which time I had become well-versed in witchcraft.

“I became so strong spiritually that once when my mother took me to a pastor in Cote d’ivoire, where we lived, to be exorcised, a strong burst of smoke suddenly came out of my nose and mouth as the pastor faced me, forcing him to fall flat on the ground. He was not strong spiritually to face the witchcraft spirit in me, so we left.”

According to Olivia, later and before her mother could decide to take her to see another man of God, the witches ordered her to bring her mother down to the camp to be slaughtered for one of their numerous feasts “since I had been feasting on other witches’ meat and had never brought any meat to the camp for a feast.”

I felt reluctant to comply with their order and so I refused to go to the camp for two weeks but they attacked me at home spiritually one night and beat me up mercilessly until I became very weak. Before they left, they threatened to kill me if I refused to bring my mother to the camp within some days.

“Their spiritual assault on me manifested physically the next day. When my mother saw the marks on my body, she demanded to know what had happened but I never told her the truth. She then took me to the hospital where I was treated and discharged.

“Because of their threat to kill me, which I knew they could do, I had no option but to spiritually take my mother to the camp the following day to be slaughtered.”

She said after her mother’s death, she decided to prevent her elder sister from having children.

“I turned my left hand into a knife spiritually, opened her womb and placed a goat’s horn in there to prevent her seeds from growing. It has been in there for the last 10 years during which my sister has gone all lengths to find a solution to her barrenness without success wasting a lot of time and money in the processes.”

The goat’s horn was invoked spiritually by Prophet Osei and Olivia’s sister vomited it out in the presence of the congregation after she (Olivia) was ordered into the bush to pluck some leaves which the prophet used to induce the vomiting.

According to Olivia, if her sister had gone for an operation in her quest for a baby, she would have died on the operating table.

“Also I had no reason to place a cowry in the stomach of my grandmother but I did, resulting in her constant stomach troubles which wasted her money when she went round hospitals and herbal centres looking for a cure.” The old lady vomited the cowry in the presence of the congregation after the prophet commanded it out.

Olivia, who does not know how to drive a vehicle physically, said as a witch, she was a driver at the camp and drove the witches to wherever she was directed to drive them to.

Asked where they got their vehicles from to drive around spiritually, she said they could use anybody’s vehicle spiritually.

“The car may be seen to have been parked but we take it away spiritually,” she said.

She added that their careless nocturnal driving sometimes damaged some of the vehicles they took away spiritually, giving the owners a hell of trouble the following day.

Asked whether she had a witch’s pot in her possession, she replied in the affirmative and said it contained all the moneys her parents and brothers have acquired in their lifetime, adding that it accounted for their abject poverty and inability to advance economically as well as other miseries in their lives.

“I have put several impediments in their way to prevent them from advancing in life,” she said, adding that even though it may be sheer wickedness on her part in the physical world, in the spiritual world, no witch or wizard recognises his or her family members, much more having sympathy for them over their day-to-day miseries.

When we go to the camp, we hold parties, sing and dance around. When people bring their ‘animals’, we slaughter them and prepare a feast.

As to how she went out to the witches’ camp, Olivia said she would spiritually put her room mates to sleep, turn into smoke and pass under the door of the room to the outside. Once outside, she would turn into a bat and fly away.

S: ghananews

Officials with the nonprofit group Every Child Matters say 354 Hoosier children died from abuse and neglect from 2001 to 2007, that’s more than 50-per year.

Those numbers are up more than 15-percent from the 2001 rate.

Indiana’s Department of Child Services Communication Director Ann Houseworth says several key factors must be addressed to lower the number of child neglect and abuse cases.

“Domestic abuse and child abuse are tied closely together,” said Houseworth. “And until issues like domestic violence and drug and alcohol usage have a light shown on them it will be difficult to make huge strides and progress in protecting children.”

Officials with SCAN, Stop Child Abuse and Neglect, say they’re working every day to help Hoosier children in Northeast Indiana.

The Communication Director with SCAN, Stephanie Jentgen, says the state has created a program to lower the number of abused and neglected children.

“The program, which is the Network For Safe Families, here in this area, offers help for those sorts of problems for families,” Jentgen said. “Just with a simple phone call we can assess your needs and hook you up with another organization right in your very county that can help you address any problems you’re having and be that good nurturing safe parent that we know you want to be.”

The program is free; you just have to call 421-5000 to participate.

The report also ranks Indiana near the bottom of states in spending per child to address abuse and neglect.

State officials are looking into those findings and say they’ll take appropriate action once results are in.

If you’re a parent who is having trouble with your child and need help you can call the Child Protective Services Hotline at 1-800-800-5556.

State officials say the hotline will connect you with help in your county. They say this number is there to help parents in stressful situations, not to get them in trouble with the law.

If you or someone you know suspects a child is being abused call police. Jentgen says it’s better to call and have someone look into the situation than to find a child died because someone didn’t call.

It’s also the law to call police if you suspect child abuse or neglect.

This 2007 report, released this year, is the latest information on child abuse and neglect cases available.

By Laura Donaldson (http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/65639512.html)

If God put a dream in your heart
Write it -keep it as a treasure
Whatever anyone says, protect the vision with passion…