Devotion
Dear Subscriber,
Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are unable to continue the weekday Lift Up Your Heart devotionals.
It is our hope that in the future we may be able to resume providing the devotional, or at least, have a series at particular points in the Anglican Liturgical Calendar.
As you will appreciate there has been considerable time and effort involved in producing the devotionals thus far.
Much of that work has been done voluntarily and we want to thank our writers, recorders and translators for providing such a wonderful service over the course of these past months.
We continue to pray that the devotions will have caused you to regularly turn to the Scriptures and seek the counsel of our great God for your daily life.
The Lord be with you.
Archbishop Ben Kwashi
General Secretary
18th June 2020
We must never treat suffering as an abstract philosophical issue. Jesus’ disciples did this in John 9; when seeing a man born blind, begging, they wonder “who sinned this man or his parents?” Jesus...
17th June 2020
Where do we go for help with fear, suffering and death? The Lord obviously, and what is he like? This is important as the better we know someone, the more we are likely to trust them, assuming, that...
16th June 2020
The writings of that godly man the first Bishop of Liverpool JC Ryle have been a great source of help to me in suffering. Here I share his reflections on Lazarus in italics and my thoughts below.
1...
15th June 2020
What's our biggest problem as Christians? I suggest it is this: that we don't know God enough, we don't trust him enough, we don't love him enough and that we don't pray to him enough. But this is...
12th June 2020
I’m writing this devotional looking down from on high into the historic streets of London which are now eerily deserted. Unfortunately this is not my home, but a famous London cancer hospital, the...
11th June 2020
Psalm 34 was written when David was desperate. It helped me when I was desperate.
The key thing in starting to know God is a sense of our need for God. This need is itself planted by God in our...
10th June 2020
Last October I was stunned by the news that two great friends of mine, Chris and Susanna Naylor had been killed in a terrible car accident, taking them immediately to God, but leaving behind three...
9th June 2020
To what may we compare illness fear and suffering? To a rollercoaster: not an image we find in the Bible of course! Like a rollercoaster you are strapped in and can’t get out. At times nothing much...
8th June 2020
In this life we often don’t know why illness happens, but this we do know: that God is sovereign over all things and is working all things together for his purposes. Namaan, the commander of the...
5th June 2020
Ecclesiastes (7:13) is "Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?" Thomas Boston (1676-1732) wrote a wonderful book on this "The Crook in the Lot" which I found...
4th June 2020
The book of Job shows how not to help others who are suffering. Job's comforters get so many things wrong. They try and take control. But if the storm is raging only God can calm the storm. Our job...
3rd June 2020
Since having cancer I’ve never felt angry with God but I’ve often wondered “why me?”. I think we all sometimes feel this in suffering and fear. The story of Joseph in the Old Testament I have found...
2nd June 2020
The Bible tells us that death and his two sidekicks fear and suffering are intruders. We live in a beautiful house and one night we hear the noise of breaking glass and we realise that someone has...
1st June 2020
Perhaps the hardest part of the Christian life is dealing with that unholy and unwanted trio of visitors; fear, suffering and death. Death, the Bible tells us, is the last enemy and one we must all...
29th May 2020
Irenaeus, born around 130 to a Christian family, was a disciple of Bishop Polycarp in Smyrna, who had himself been a disciple of the Apostle John. After a persecution decimated the church in Gaul,...
28th May 2020
Cyril of Alexandria was born in the small town of Didouseya, Egypt in 376. At the age of 38 he became the patriarch of Alexandria, a turbulent cosmopolitan city with over a half million inhabitants...
27th May 2020
Cyril of Alexandria was born in the small town of Didouseya, Egypt in 376. At the age of 38 he became the patriarch of Alexandria, a turbulent cosmopolitan city with over a half million inhabitants...
26th May 2020
Leo the Great, a native of Tuscany, was elected bishop of Rome in 440 and is perhaps best known for meeting with Attila the Hun in 452 and persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy. The...