CityLight Church

I remember as a child, at one stage one of my favourite toys was the magnifying glass. I would do all sorts of things with it - some not so productive things (which I won’t go into) but also some very interesting things.
One of the things I noticed was how we can look at things in much greater detail. I could focus on an ant… and see how much detail I could see... before…
Anyway, I noticed that through a magnifying glass I  could see things that I couldn’t with the natural eye. I noticed that the detail increased. The object not only looked larger, but clearer. The further away I took the glass the more detail I saw, until I took it to a point where it became blurry, and I could no longer focus on it. I also noticed that I needed to be close to the object in order to see it. Looking at the world as a whole through a magnifying glass, depending on where you hold it, does nothing more than blur the image, or turn it upside down. 
It’s interesting that as we get older, we never really put away the glass. We don’t physically hold onto one, but we do regularly use an internal glass a lot more often than we realise.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, “What am I focussing on? The things we focus on are what become magnified. It’s really quite simple: Focus on problems, they will only get bigger. Focus on Jesus, and He will get bigger. The things you ‘focus’ on will be the things that you will focus on and they will ultimately control the direction of your life. 
Have an awesome week, 
Adrian Nyhuis.

Many of you may have heard this week that Doug Duncan who used to be a part of our church passed away on Oct 5th after a 3 year battle with cancer. For those who are interested, you can watch his final sermon which he delivered at Hope Community Church on Sept 9th at http://dougduncan.info.
We’ve all heard it said before, “Life is so short”. Even if we were to live to 100 years old, it is still such a short time in comparison to where we will spend eternity. None of us know that day or the hour that we will be promoted to heaven, so all we can do while we have the chance is to live in such a way that we can be on the receiving end of God saying, “Well done!”
We can never understand why some people pass away earlier than others. One thing is sure, we will all pass away one day. I suppose the question we need to ask is not why someone passed away, but what mark did they leave on the world whilst they were here?  
As people get older they tend to look back on life and reassess things, and it is becoming more common for  people to produce what is known as a bucket list (things you would like to achieve before you die). Many people say that if they know they were going to die tomorrow, there would be certain things they would do today. What would your “bucket list” be in relation to God? What things would you like to achieve for Him whilst you are able to make a difference on this earth. What has God called you to do? Are you doing it, or have you left it because it looked like it was too difficult?
Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. If we look at the Hebrew meaning behind the words used, we see that this verse is literally saying that if we allow ourselves to be soft and pliable in God’s hands, He will assign us our dreams like a soldier receives his or her orders. That means that our dreams can be God inspired.  If that is the case, then we have nothing to lose by dreaming big about things that we can do for Him.
If you have stopped dreaming, then it’s time you start again. Write your dreams down. They key is that you begin dreaming about how under God’s direction, you can leave your mark on the world for Him.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead. I dare you! Dare to dream.
Adrian Nyhuis