GIVE YOUR BODY TO GOD - IT IS HIS!

I REMEMBER THIS POSTER FROM THE LATE 1950s.    I was a smoker myself by then.
It made an impression on me at the time - I even had a hat and raincoat to match!!   BUT I knew the truth as well - I knew loneliness was not removed by a cigarette.
I guess cigarettes, both then and now, remain just a 'crutch' to help you get though a day, a lonely life.     MANY walk though life with something to 'lean on'; something provide them with a little confidence to boost their boredom.     Alcohol is another such 'crutch'.     Drugs, Sex, Porno, and even  Masturbation all came under the same label.     Often even an apparently harmless, even 'helpful', habit could be interpreted as human comfort or encouragement.        Instead of turning to God we all look for something more tangible, and in doing so miss God altogether from the point of view of letting Him prove his ability to remove our loneliness, our fears, and just BE the friend we need
When I was just twenty years of age I was smoking about six packets of fags a day and had an array of some seven  tobacco pipes which I regularly puffed away at.     One day as I was travelling by train from the south coast up to the City of London, alone in a carriage, reading and smoking...I happened to look up and out of the window.     We were passing through a very dirty, industrial area. There were tall grimy chimneys funnelling dense black smoke into the already lurid atmosphere.   The BIBLE was open on my lap - I had begun reading Romans 12v1

'I appeal to you therefore,brethren, and beg of you

in view of all the mercies of God

to make a decisive dedication of your bodies

presenting all your members and faculties as a living sacrifice,

holy devoted, consecrated, and well pleasing to God,

which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship.

I WAS SUDDENLY confronted with a vision of what the smoke I was seeing was actually doing to the chimneys it passed through, and the atmosphere it collided with.      I sat aghast, seeing the almost graphic picture of what I was doing to my body (the temple of GOD) and the world around me.   

I stood up, opened the carriage window and threw out the cigarette I was smoking, the packet I had in my pocked, a spare pipe in my jacket pocket, and a box of matches.       I NEVER on any occasion thereafter smoked ANYTHING anywhere. Smoking was out of my life.      Why had I never seen the truth of the matter before?    WHY?         There have been other things in my life.     Not all of them were so easy to deal with !!     BUT whatever God has pointed out to me have GONE, even when on some occasions it took time and a fight.   In the end I managed to have them all 'BY THE TAIL!'

MOSES wandered with his sheep in the desert not far from Horeb the Mountain of God.   He was not seeking God in any particular, just doing what he did on most days, his daily duty.      It was rough terrain, and not very fertile.      THEN suddenly he had seen a bush burning!      Drawing closer God clearly SPOKE to him, and unexpectedly said 'WHAT HAVE YOU GOT IN YOUR HAND?'

Moses answered as honestly as he could and said 'It's just a stick, a Rod; something help me along with the sheep, something lean on.!'   "PUT IT DOWN" God said,  and when Moses did so the Rod he had clung to became a serpent upon the ground, something that could kill him.
We can be SO used to something in our life;   we do not even question it or examine it.   YET we could be taking something for granted that will eventually cripple us.   It might get the upper hand.    We should examine every 'habitual' action that is part of our life.    Put it down and LOOK at it objectively for a moment - it might turn out to be a snake.

I only smoked for three years.    It never occurred to me what it was doing to me; how it could even shorten my LIFE!     Many of my friends continued through many decades, and are all dead and gone now.    Cancer, Heart disease, Lung disease carried them off.     The smoke and nicotine of tobacco took it's eventual toll,  and the temple of God was brought to ruin and pulled down.   

Now Moses, PICK UP THAT SNAKE BY THE TAIL!  says God.
Most snake handlers go for the head - or perhaps just behind the head at the NECK.     To take a snake by the tail is to give it the chance to turn upon you and inflict its deadly bite.   Why did God tell Moses to do the most dangerous thing?     To prove him, and also, in confronting the real danger of the snake, to find 
against and over it.

THAT night when I got home from work I was confronted, on my sitting room wall with a rack of tobacco pipes, different jars of tobacco, and a whole pile of cigarette packets.      I stood and looked at them for a moment.     Then I walked straight over to them, gathered them ALL in my hands and took them to the fireplace.   I spilled them all into it, and taking a match set fire to them.    I watched until  all   was ashes.      I HAD THAT HABIT BY THE TAIL.   I might have been tempted to have just one last fag..... but NO,      'Once BITTEN twice shy'      I RESISTED the fear, and the cigarettes and tobacco became a REAL piece of wood in my hand.

A lot more could be said about this passage of Scripture in Exodus   3-4 and I apologise for using it to make another point.     HOWEVER,   We should all take a Rain-check as to what IS in our Hand - our life - that we look to more than God...........It maybe could suddenly become an unexpected and unlooked for enemy, bent on keeping us from the BEST in Life, and indeed keeping us from GOD, and His power and strength for our life.

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THIS WEEK has been quiet.       There is also another 'cold' in Green Cottage, and we have all, with me being the last as usual, have caught it.     Mainly sore throat, cough and thick heard.    So we have been rather avoided by others on the compound - in case 'they catch it as well'    In actual fact WE think we caught it from Micah Yego of Tyndale Cottage who brought it with him to our morning Prayer Meeting at the end of last week!!      Well, but let us Praise God for all things....!

Daryl was away until Thursday as from Sunday last week doing business in Nairobi again.

Esther and I were invited to supper on Saturday by some Danish missionary friends.     We arrived at 6.30 p.m. at their home, but then on being ushered into their sitting room we were confronted by a group of some eight other of our friends all singing Happy Birthday to me - for my 75th!!   I was quite astonished and overwhelmed, Esther as well.     We had a truly wonderful and blessed time together.

Esther went off to Nairobi again yesterday for the week-end.   Thika Road Baptist Church where we were married on 14th August 1971 is celebrating its Birthday, and Esther being one of the Founding Members of the Church  was invited to be there.   She should be back again late on Monday.    So I am here struggling with my cold, and praying it will clear by tomorrow so that I can bring the Word in our Sunday Morning Fellowship.

Daryl has just dropped in to share that Jacaranda Family might be able to move into their NEW house next weekend!!     He is feeling a little concerned however since the house will look SO NEW, and the furniture and so on will look a little OLD and perhaps a little sparse as well.     God knows all about it.    It is not the furniture that counts - Esther and I many times moved into premises that had NOTHING, not even a chair to sit on.     BUT we never felt uncomfortable or unhappy since we all had each other, and great fun even with the least.

God Bless you all.        It will rain here again today.    Quite a wet May. 

Your family in Jesus Name

John Esther and Daryl Green