Sister's Day

Sister's Day?  Oh, some people call it "Sibling's Day".  How did it get started?  Originally it was started by a lady named Claudia Evart to honor the memory of her brother and sister both of whom died at early ages; she wanted a celebration of those relationships.  She must have been a very loving sister.  She celebrated around 10 April which was her sister's birthday; however, time and place really don't much matter for those of us who wish to honor our own siblings.  Although Evart has so far been unsuccessful in getting this day instituted as a public holiday, it doesn't need to stop us if we want to celebrate.  Some people do just that and many have chosen the august month of August.  But hey, does it really matter when?

Originally the following sharing was presented at a church ladies' fellowship group where we wanted to celebrate our relationship with our sister's-in-Christ in the area.  We wished to help strengthen relationship among each other with prayers and togetherness.  We also invited our friends to join us in the hopes that they too may one day become part of this wonderful bond we can have through Jesus Christ; to become part of God's family along with us.  I present this sharing here in an adapted form and may God bless all who read it.

 The ladies' group had always wanted to build each other up in their most holy faith in God and get to know each other so well that when joys or troubles came our way we would feel freer to share more easily and openly, with less shyness and to find help and strength from God together.

When we build these friendships well, we will even know our friend's dog's name and as one character named Charlotte Gray is purported to have said:

                        "You can kid the world but not your sister." 

Let us observe our sisters, not to be busybodies, but out of sincere love and concern for each others' well being:  spiritually, emotionally, physically and mentally.  Get to know each other so well in appropriate ways, that whether in joy or in sorrow we can connect and detect where and when help is needed.

At the start of our celebration, we had a mini garage sale of "white elephants" from our homes (one person's junk is another's treasure), followed by a dinner. (The proceeds of the sale to go to a charity we were helping to support.)  During that time we each had a rectangle of paper taped simply to our backs with scotch tape.  On that piece of paper we wrote a mini message to as many of the ladies as we wanted to.   We wrote what  that sister meant to us; what we liked about her and/or mini words of encouragement.  This is an exercise to help build up each sister as a woman of worth, not only in God's eyes but as a sister in God's family.  Later on they got to read what was written.

The term "sister" is used among Christian circles when referring to one another because when we become a  follower of Jesus Christ, God calls us His children.  No matter what we look like or from which country or race we are from, we are God's children.  If God is our Father that  means we each are His children and in His family; thus each of His children would then be brothers or sisters in Christ. 

"You may be as different as the sun and moon, but the same blood flows through our hearts.  You need her, she needs you."  ~George R. R. Martin~

With sister's-in-Christ, we also talk about the blood.  Who's blood?  Jesus Christ's...but let's go back a bit...

In life there is plenty of suffering.  No doubt most, if not all, here have experienced such:  money problems; health issues; marital stresses; boy-girl relationships; worry over our children or even the loss of a child.  Just so much suffering in this old world. 

Prince Siddhartha Gautama of India (also known as 'Buddha'), after being traumatically shocked at the sight of the abject poverty and suffering of his fellow countrymen, when he had his first glimpse of such when he'd escaped out of his 'ivory palace' at the tender age of sixteen, philosophized and wondered...

People suffer...why?

He acknowledged...people have sin.

We know from our Bibles how sin entered the world; through one man named Adam (and his wife Eve).

Prince Sid went on to ponder...people sin, therefore there will be punishment.

The first Buddha said that that punishment is suffering in life and then in the end, death and after death, hell.  There are different levels of hell depending on the degree of sin.  Buddha developed many rules and regulations for living by, to minimize the sin people got up to, with corresponding levels of hell if they didn't follow them.

To follow all this takes ones' own effort.  One might be able to make a go at it for a while, but in the end there would be much failure and frustration and one would still have to face at least one of those levels of hell no matter what, according to those beliefs.  Man's, or woman's, in our case, efforts fall short.

God's Word tells us that the curse and wages of sin is death and hell.  That is our punishment; forever.

NO sinner can get off the hook.  No matter how good living a person is in this life, and there are some very, very good living people, I definitely grant you that, there doesn't seem to be much hope for any of us using our own efforts of righteousness.

BUT God offers us hope....He has a rescue plan...the Bible says in John 3:16...

"For God so loved the world..."

Stop there for a minute...

God sooooooo loved...He didn't leave us with the death sentence hanging over our heads because He so loved us...His love prompted His action.

"...that He gave His one and only Son..."

How many of us would willingly give our child up to take a gangster's punishment; a gangster who had raped and murdered or kidnapped children to sell into prostitution?  Oh you might not think you are a gangster...I believe that most reading this are likely very good living people but we all have the 'death sentence over our heads' if we are not a child of God.  Thank God that His love for us compelled Him to do something about that and He gave His "one and only Son".  One and only...!  Think of that!

There is a story from a way back in the 1800's about a fellow named Pierre Paul Emile Roux who worked with the Louis Pasteur Foundation.  He was in the medicine line as well as bacteriology and immunology and developed the vaccine for black diphtheria, a dreaded, fatal disease. 

Most of the medical world of that time eventually wouldn't sanction Pierre and his work, so he took his experiments and bacteria into the forest.  He brought twenty beautiful horses, so the story goes, into the forest and infected each with the black diphtheria bacteria.  All but one died and then the last of the twenty horses was in the last throes of the disease, lying down moaning.  In the middle of the night, however, one of the assistants awoke Pierre to tell him that the horse's fever was reducing and by day break it had come down to normal.  Pierre got a mallet and whacked the horse on the head and the horse died.  This is a gruesome story but I do have a point.  Pierre then collected the horse's blood from which there was antidote...a vaccine.  He and his cohorts rushed that vaccine into the hospital, breaking through those who would stop them, and vaccinated three hundred black diphtheria-sick babies who were quarantined til death.  All but three of those babies survived!  The life of that last horse was given for the life of three hundred babies; one died for all.  And likely a whole number more people were vaccinated since then.

Back to the story of God and His Son Jesus..

Why did God give His Son?

"...so that whosoever believes in Him..."

"Whosoever" = you, me, anyone...believes in Him,

"...should not perish but have everlasting life." ( John 3:16). 

To perish would be to be put into hell forever with no way out, termed, everlasting death; everlasting death as opposed to everlasting life.

Everlasting life however, means to be with Jesus Christ in heaven forever.

Jesus, the One and Only Son, died for our sins, every single last one of them, from every single last person in the whole wide world.  One died for all, for the "whosoever".  He took the penalty for those sins.

What was the penalty?  Death and hell.

Praise the Lord, He rose again from the dead securing our rescue.  This is all Jesus's effort; not an ounce of our human effort was required at all, at all to secure payment for our sins.  It was noted that our human effort would fall short and we'd still end up in hell.  Jesus's effort is all encompassing and enough.  Enough to pay for the penalty for our sins and enough to keep us out of hell and forever in heaven at the end of our earthly life.  Praise the Lord for His rescue.

Jesus is THE WAY, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

Jesus is the way to heaven.

Jesus is the way to avoid going to hell.  Hell with all its torments.

I've heard that in Singapore there is a hell museum type of place you can go through.  You can look it up on Google.  I've never been but they say its very scary.  For example, there are ten levels of hell depicted in that Buddhist belief of Hell.  Level three is for those who have been ungrateful and have disrespected their elders.  Their hearts will be cut out.  In level seven, rumor mongers and those who sow discord among family members get to have their tongues cut out.  That is only a model...what would the real place be like?

The Bible talks about Hell being a place of darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Jesus is the Way to escape, to never ever have to go there. 

Jesus offers salvation to one and all.  He holds it out in His hands to you as if on an offering plate or a present on your birthday.  He holds it out to you.  It's yours, it's got your name on it.  If you never reach out and take it, its not going to be any use to you.  You must choose to take it and then take it.

When you receive God's offer through Jesus, you come into His family.  He calls you His child and He loves you to the core; way deep down where you crave acceptance and validity as a person.  He loves you.  He accepts you as you are.  He has forgiven you your sins and taken your punishment for you.

People want longevity and immortality.  They do not want to die.  Jesus is the Way.  Through Jesus's death and resurrection and our acceptance of His gift of salvation, we have everlasting life.  This is what people yearn for.

Our bodies may crumple up and die but our spirits and souls live on.  As a child of God we go to heaven because from the exact second we accept Jesus we have "everlasting life".  If a person dies without Christ their spirit and soul will eventually go to everlasting death and torture in hell.  It's as plain as that.

When we come into God's family, He takes care of us.  He loves you.  He has forgiven your sins because the blood of Jesus Christ has washed those sins away.  He has given you everlasting life.

When each individual comes to God through Jesus Christ, its because the "blood of Jesus Christ has washed away and cleansed us from our sins" (1 John 1:7).  Our hearts are now clean.  Our hearts now flow with the same blood, not from biological parents but from our adoptive parent God, through Jesus.  God looks down from heaven at our hearts and sees His one and only Son Jesus's sacrificial blood has wiped and washed them clean from all sin and replaced it with His righteousness, and He accepts us into His family.  Any of His children are now brothers and sisters in Christ.

Many of us ladies reading this are likely already sisters.  We would like all readers to be our sister (or brother) too.  Then we can begin that special sisterly bond and relationship with you too.  We need each other.  We need you.  You need us.  Reach out to the sisters in your neck of the woods and connect with each other today. 

You see, we get so much because of God's love for us.  He gave His Son, but has also given us His family.  As we build our relationship with God (that's right, I'm talking about 'relationship' NOT religion) we must also build with His family.

I mentioned that God accepts us as we are, on an "as is where is basis".  We don't have to attain to a certain level of goodness in order for God to love us and offer us his salvation and this means no matter what you have done, or to what degree of wickedness a person might have committed, He still wants you in His family.  He loves you too much to reject you now in this day of grace period.  However, there is a saying that goes something like this:  "God loves you and accepts you into His family as you are but He loves you too much to leave you that way".

Picture a coin; it's two-sided.  On one side you come into God's family as you are--you have forgiveness of sins and everlasting life and a brother-&-sister-in-Christ family.  The other side of the coin is, how am I suppose to live in this family?  How to live like a Christian?  How is a Christian to behave?

There are many, many things we are supposed to do in the way to behave in God's family.  We live this way so we don't give God, Jesus or His family a bad reputation.  For example, a senior pastor in a regional mega church grossly mismanaged church funds.  He ended up in prison.  People look at that and say, "If that is what a Christian is like, I definitely don't want to have anything to do with God or Jesus or any Christian, for that matter and I certainly don't want to become one!"  And so we are all in disrepute. (Yet our Father is a forgiving one and would hold out forgiveness to that brother.  If he repents, we too will have to forgive him.)   Thus, God in His great wisdom has given us a whole Bible full of ways in which to please Him.  Read well to know and obey His will and ways. 

Matthew 28:19,20 says,

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..." 

A disciple is a follower of Jesus and the emphasis I want to make here which often gets overlooked, is "teaching them to obey".  Once we are a follower of Jesus we must follow, we must obey and not pick and choose what to obey but to obey "everything" in God's Word.

The New Testament has so many instructions on how to live for God.  The more we submit to God and obey them, the more Christ-like our behavior will be.  God wants us to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:15).  Many of our ways of living, habits we have, language we use, we need to be rid of them and start acting more like Jesus would.

How to know how Jesus would behave?  By reading God's Word.  The first four books of the New Testament tell many wonderful stories of Jesus:  what He did and how He did them and how He treated the people with kindness and goodness, helping the poor and needy and much more.  The more we read and study God's Word, the more we will know how to behave in His family.  By reading and knowing God's Word and obeying it we will slowly become more like Him and will please Him. 

This is the Way to follow.  Jesus is the Way.  Follow Him.  He is the right Way.

We have God's Word, we have Jesus, we have our brothers and sisters-in-Christ to connect with to help us in this new life with Him.  There is more...the moment we accept Jesus's gift of salvation we also get forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.  We are also given the Holy Spirit of God to indwell us.  His, God's, Spirit!

His Holy Spirit can lead and guide us.  We don't need to beg for dreams in temples or use other methods of divination to know our future or to find our way out of our troubles.  We have God's Word the Bible and God's Holy Spirit.  And it is all free for us.  When we talk to God He will talk to us through His Word and His Spirit.

We can show our gratitude to Him by worshiping Him.  Him, the Creator God of all the universe; our almighty God , our loving, Heavenly Father.  Worship Him, the Creator, not His creation.  It's lovely to get into a 'back to nature' setting and relax in front of beautiful scenery and feel cool breezes on our faces as it can be so refreshing and de-stressing.  A grand feeling of wanting to commune with nature may come to us.  But nature is not God.  Nature is creation not our Creator.  God wants us to worship Him and to become one with Him, not with His plants, birds or bees.

Certainly there's no harm in being in nature and calmness can come from that but Jesus tells us a sure way of de-stressing...

Jesus said in Matthew 11:28,

"Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Another verse, 1 Peter 5:7 says,

"Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."

"Him", meaning, God and His mighty hand outstretched to you, this time offering you rest and peace and to de-stress.  Take a deep breath, hold for the count of five then slowly let go.  Do that two more times. Make a list on paper of your anxieties, worries and cares.   Now talk to God. Give Him your weariness, burdens and anxiety.  He'll give you rest.

We all need to go to God and rest in Him.  Close your eyes, breathe deeply again, take time for another short time of individual prayer and bathe in God's love and care.

Do you realize that the number of stress related diseases or conditions there are out there?  High BP; various heart related diseases; migraines, etc.  Medicines mostly do not cure them, they only manage them.  But God has asked us to put our fears, anxieties, worries, and stresses on Him.  He's got a mighty hand.  Trust Him.  He'll give you rest.  The root cause of many diseases are because we do not obey His simple commands.  I read this fairly recently from a book called Be In Health, A More Excellent Way by Dr. Henry W. Wright.*

This is getting to be a rather long article and so I won't go into too much greater detailed description of this "other side of the coin" of behavior in God's family.  However, remember some of these following thoughts are in regard to our character and conduct in His family that need to be brought into line with God's Word, which is our standard.

Briefly...

                         More About Christian Living

James 3:  Tame your tongue; don't let praise and cursing come out of the same mouth.  I can tell you that driving in the city I now live in can really give cause to curses coming out so, so easily.  The way people drive and cut in on you is enough to make a big sinner out of you.  I admit, I am guilty of a lot of cursing and God is having to get a hold of me with these verses.  So now, I say, "God, look at that guy, look what he did, he cut right in front of me and now he's blocking the way, blah, blah, blah."  And what does God say?  "Are you now going to praise Me?"   And I say, "Ok, ok, Lord, I will bless that fellow.  May he have a good day, maybe he's on the way to the hospital to see a sick and dying mother, or maybe he's in a hurry because he has to go to the bathroom.  God he needs your help and needs you if he is not a Christian yet.  Let Him know you so he won't cut in on me again..."  And then God says to me, "Are you asking me that with wrong motives?"   I say back to God, "Ok, ok, Lord, he needs you so he can go to be with you someday..."

You see how this works?  We have to submit even these simple mundane areas of our life to Him so that He can make us more like Him.

James 4:  Submit to God; resist the devil. When we submit to God, the curses won't come out so easily and that is also resisting the devil.

James 4 is also "do not slander one another".  That old tongue needs the taming on this too.  If they are bros and sis-in-Christ, why do we want to talk bad about them; they are our kin?  Why can't we, by God's grace, be forgiving of wrongs (real or imaginary)?

Actually if you read from 1 Corinthians all the way clear to Jude you'll see that malice and slander are a HUGE issue.  God sees them equally as bad as adultery (1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 6:11 [NIV])!  Much of that slander stems from unforgiveness, anger and bitterness in our lives towards others.

1 Peter 2:1 says,

"...rid yourselves of all malice and slander of all kinds..."

That is a command in God's Word!  What should we do instead?  Here comes another command:

"Crave pure spiritual milk..."

Craving....think of something you really like.  I mean really, really like.  Take for instance, people who love to play badminton.  They go and play two or three times a week.  They watch it being played on TV especially when their 'star' player is playing.  And if they are not playing or watching they are talking about it.  They saturate themselves and everyone else with it.    Or people who love shopping, just can't seem to get enough of it.   You get the idea.

So too, with God's Word.  Read it and drink it in.  Crave it.

I want to tell you about my "Thankfulness Book".  An 'angel' from Sunday School once gave me a hot pink spiral notebook in a gift exchange around Christmas time a couple of years ago.  I started to jot down on a daily basis at least one thing that I was thankful for that day.  Some days I was hard put, but I'd 'vowed' to write, so write I did even if it was only to say to God, "Thank you for the food I had to eat today; I am grateful."

Have you tasted that the Lord is good?  Jot that goodness down and then you can go back and review His ways of goodness to you.  In return, honor Him with obedience to His Word, will and ways.  He says in 1 Samuel 2:30, that those who honor Him by obeying His commands, He'll honor back.

So what I'm saying my friends and sisters (& brothers), Come to Jesus, He is the Way to God, the Way to everlasting life, the Way to forgiveness of sins, the Way to a new life in a new family:  God's family, with new brothers and sisters to interact and connect with.  Jesus is the Way to have a Spirit guide in your life and that Spirit is God's Holy Spirit.  Jesus is the Way to God and upon whom to put our stresses, worries and grievances.

You want to go the right way?  Come to Jesus Who is that Way.  Come and follow Him.  Obey Him you'll not regret it.  He loves you to the core and wants you in His family.  You can then truly celebrate the relationship we have in Christ.  May each of you truly experience Sister's Day to the full.


If any of you readers would like to come to Christ, to be His child and be my sister or brother-in-Christ , here is what you can do.

Admit to God that you have done wrong, that you have sin and are a sinner.
Tell God you repent of those sins and confess them to Him.   Ask Jesus to wash all your sins away with His precious blood which He shed for you on the cross.  Thank Him for taking the penalty of your sins by dying and going to hell for you.  Thank Him then for that forgiveness of sins, this gift of salvation and for the everlasting life.  Find then, someone to tell and find a group of brothers and sisters-in-Christ to connect with.   Build your relationship with God by reading His Word and obeying it and talking daily with Him.  

May God bless you all.

*Note:  Re:  Dr. Henry  W. Wright and his ministry... I may not agree with all he says but most is ok.


                                                         ~ERC  2016~