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I’ve been quoting this poem of Frederick Faber’s often…we even sing it at our church…and recently I shared it with a loved one experiencing a personal disappointment:-
I bow me to Your will, O God
And all Your ways adore
And every day I live I’d seek
To please you more and more
He always wins who sides with God
To him no chance is lost
God’s will is sweetest to him when
It triumphs at his cost
Lead on, lead on triumphantly
Oh, blessed Lord, lead on
Faith’s pilgrim sons behind You seek
The road that You have gone
Ill that God blesses is our good
And unblest good is ill
And all is right that seems most wrong
If it be His sweet will
This poem was composed yesterday for one of our church ladies who is undergoing chemotherapy.
My friend and sister in the Lord
Your fellow Christians are in accord
We want you well
So you can tell
God’s many graces you’ve explored
There’s saving grace, so rich and free
Made possible through Calvary
And keeping grace
Which you can trace
Throughout your life’s diversity
But you’re also finding special grace
That gives you strenth so you’ll embrace
Weakness or loss
Your current cross
And thus let faith all fear displace
Sufficient grace, God’s promise true
Is always there when days are blue
It can’t run out
So never doubt
Take heart, thank God, He’s still with you
Transforming grace, ah, that’s the aim
That you might all God’s best attain
Christ’s likeness wearing
His blessings sharing
And then His “Well done!” finally gaining
Mervyn Paul coined the phrase which was popularized in a book published by my uncle, John H. Adams, entitled TRAINING FOR REIGNING. Here it is –
LIFETIME
IS
TRAINING TIME
FOR
REIGNING TIME
That puts our circumstances in their proper perspective, doesn’t it? The Lord has each of His redeemed ones in training for a specific role in His eternal kingdom. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” So it is evident we cannot fill the role for which we are destined without going through this particular Boot Camp program we are in right now. And an all-wise God has actually written a very personal and detailed curriculum for each individual Christian. I guess Paul Billhiemer was right when he told us, “DON’T WASTE YOUR SORROWS.”
Say not, my soul,
“From whence can God remove
my every care?”
Remember:
Omnipotence has servants everywhere!
His methods are sublime,
His ways supremely kind.
God never is before His time
And never is behind.
Wednesday evenings from October 2005 to April 2006, I had the joy of sharing some of my simple thoughts on consecutive books of the Old Testament with the Frankford FM congregation. To do so, I used PowerPoint slides. If you’re searching, perhaps, for a different approach to one of these fascinating Hebrew Scriptures, you may want to take a look. This introductory presentation is a sample. I have studies on file all the way from Genesis to Joel – 24 in all. If this approach is of interest to you, write me anjadams@sympatico.ca and mention for which book(s) you want the PPT. and I will send it (them) to you as an attachment.
OT Study – In All the Scriptures
Sunday, April 22, 2007 – Twenty-five years ago on this date, Jeannette and I were married in Sarnia, Ontario. Would you believe that exactly 26 years ago, to the day, Jeannette and met for the first time?
Well, to celebrate we have invited many of our family members and close friends to join us in Frankford on April 22nd to witness the renewal of our vows (officiated by Free Methodist Bishop Keith Elford) at the close of our morning worship service and to enjoy an anniversary dinner together at Station 1802. There will be songs and recitals and speeches, along with a scrumpcious meal.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007 – If the Lord will, Jeannette and I will fly to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to begin an exciting anniversary vacation trip we have talked about ever since we were married. We intend to pick up a rented car and immediately travel north to see the famous Giants’ Causeway. The next day we will head south into the Republic of Ireland where we have booked Bed and Breakfast accommodations in Donegal, Galway, Kilkee, Dingle, Ballinskelligs and Kildare. Our vacation is scheduled to end with two nights at a B&B five minutes from Gatwick Airport so we can take the train into London and spend one whole day seeing the sights of the city – Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St, Paul’s Cathedral, Piccadilly Circus, 10 Downing Street, etc. By God’s grace we intend to be back home in Frankford Friday, May 18, in the evening.
God has been very good to me, allowing me to spend these past 25 years with Jeannette. I thank God for her. She has been to me all that a Christian wife and intimate friend could be. To God be the glory!
How quickly we move from one week to another in the life of a congregation. Sundays come and go. But the Word of God remains true forever. On March 18, 2007, I completed the series of three talks based on the biblical Epistle to Titus. Here is the PowerPoint presentation I to illustrate chapter 3: PPT Titus Ch. 3
PPT Titus Ch. 2 Here is the PowerPoint presentation on the second talk in the three-part series, based on the Epistle of Paul to Titus, given at Frankford in March 2007
PPT Titus Ch. 1 This is the PowerPoint for the first in a series of talks based on the Epistle to Titus in the New Testament. Each of the three sessions is represented by the reading of one of the three consecutive chapters in Titus and the corresponding PowerPoint presentation. This one is based on Chapter 1.
Delivered February 10, 2007
SCRIPTURE TO BE READ: John 11:14-15, 20-44
I remember hearing Dad read and preach from this passage one evening in Cuba when I was about 15. His focus, “Lazarus is dead…and I am glad…” from which he gave a stirring, comforting message about trusting the Providence of God.
A few months ago Andrew and I received a letter from Dad, asking us to be responsible for his funeral service. As I read it, my mind went to this Scripture. I believe it encapsulates the three great, eternal realities he espoused throughout his life’s ministry, realities he bequeathed to me as his son, and to so many other believers to whom he ministered.
1st, The Greatness of the Sovereign God;
2nd, The Glory of our Saviour, Christ Jesus; and
3rd, The Importance of the Word of the Lord.
He wanted me to unreservedly believe each of these grand realities, and to live in the good of them. He wanted each of you to unreservedly believe them and live in the good of them. And I can affirm without hesitation that Arnold Adams unreservedly believed these three realities and lived in the good of them. Our Dad was a believer, a man of faith – unabashed confidence – faith in God and His Sovereignty, in Jesus and His saving grace, in the infallible authority and trustworthiness of the Bible.
According to John chapter 11, Jesus wanted his disciples to believe: “…for your sakes I am glad,” he stated, “so that you may believe.” He stated emphatically, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Then he asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” Later at the tomb, when Martha attempted to interrupt what the Lord was doing, she heard his challenge, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
“Lazarus is dead…and I am glad.” I have to be honest and confess I cannot say, Arnold Adams is dead and I am glad…but Andrew will attest to my reaction when he called me Tuesday with the news of Dad’s home call: my first words were, “Thank the Lord!” You see, we have learned from our Dad, from the Scriptures and from personal experience, that it’s impossible for an all-wise God to make a mistake. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
Whether Lazarus is alive, sick or dead…we can trust the Lord. Whether we live and die, or never die, the key to assurance is that we believe. Whether our Dad is alive or is sick or has departed to be with Christ, which is far better, our privilege today is to trust this great, sovereign and unerring God.
Did you never hear Arnold Adams quote Psalm 145? “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, his greatness is unsearchable.” My Dad served an awesome God! He trusted a God whose greatness cannot be measured, estimated or imagined.
From the Spring of 1941 when He was commended by the brethren of the Pape Avenue Gospel Hall to the grace and care of God for full-time ministry, until he and Mother were assisted very recently to access the Canada Pension Plan, to the best of my knowledge, Dad never had a regular pay cheque, never sent out appeal or circular letters, never had anyone underwriting him…he simply trusted God. He traveled back and forth to the mission field, raised a family, built four houses, paid cash for his cars. The Lord provided for his and his family’s needs. Did you read the little verse on the back page of the hymn folder?*** (By the way, it says Author Unknown…but since printing the folder, we have learned that these lines are credited to a J.J. Lynch.) Dad simply trusted his cares to an unfailing, Omnipotent God.
He told us that back in the Winter of 1940-41, he and Mother were praying about the possibility of being missionaries in Cuba, pondering the overwhelming problems that prevailed during war time. As they were doing their consecutive, daily Bible reading together, they stumbled on Matthew 28:18 and 19: “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore….” That Word of the Lord assured them of divine supervision and care, and the rest is history.
And it was with that same, simple confidence in the unvarnished word of the Lord that Dad preached the Gospel and taught his fellow Christians. That’s the reality he bequeathed to us: faith in the Scriptures. He himself acknowledged that whenever he veered away from the plain, unequivocal Word of the Lord, he ended up in confusion.
Not long after Jeannette and I had begun living in Hamilton, and meeting with Christians outside of the “assemblies”, Dad and I were conversing on the phone when he surprised me with the question, “What are the people you are moving among saying about the Lord’s Coming?” It took me a little while to unpack the question in all it meant. I became aware his extra-biblical reading had led him to some date setting. But that was not the bent of his life!
One fact is sure: Dad had a life-long, undiminished and passionate love for the Lord Jesus Christ. He never went askew on that! Never! If anything, his love for his Saviour only grew more and more as his faith grew. And it was a sound, biblical and evangelistic appreciation for the One who died and rose again for him. It was an appreciation for the Lord Jesus which he proclaimed in the Gospel and invited others to enter into. I remember a Gospel message he preached based on the parable of The Good Samaritan in which his persistent question was, “So what do you have against Jesus?”
I can assure you, we his sons who learned all about this wonderful Lord and Saviour at his feet, have nothing against Jesus. We love the Lord Jesus. We believe in the Name of the Son of God and know that we have eternal life. Last Saturday when Jeannette and I visited with Dad for the last time at Elim Homes, I said to him, “Your sons are still preaching the same Gospel you’ve preached all these years.” His response, in his very weak condition, was a faint smile and an upraised thumb.
Friends, family members, brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we stare physical death in the face and say our temporary farewells to Arnold Adams, we celebrate the Holy One who proved his claim to be The Resurrection and the Life, who sealed His role as the Giver of eternal life, by submitting to the death of crucifixion and rising victoriously from among the dead on the third day.
Mother, your husband of nearly 69 years has been taken from you. Weep, but don’t despair. It’s only a little while. The Lord you and Dad served faithfully together, the Lord who cared for you and him together, will not fail you now. You can face tomorrow, I can face tomorrow, because Jesus lives.
Alan Adams - Return to Simple Church 