Limerick City Church
Facebook Page
  • Limerick City Church
    • Who We Are
    • Where we meet
    • Leadership >
      • The Task of Leadership
      • The Need for Leadership
    • When we meet
    • What We Believe
    • Testimonies >
      • What is Life all About?
      • Margaret
  • Sermons
    • Sermon Series >
      • Book of Acts
      • Choose Your Church
      • The Faith of Abraham
      • Fruit of the Spirit
      • Christian's Warfare
      • The Healthy Church
      • B.H. Clendennen
      • How to Judge
      • Grace in Jonah
      • The New Wineskin
      • The Uniqueness of the Bible
      • Strange Trials
      • The Prayer Closet
      • Mighty Conversions
      • Various 2013-14 Limerick sermons
      • Sanctification of the Spirit
      • Lot's Journey to Sodom
      • Wisdom for the Wise
      • 2015 Limerick Ireland
      • Redeeming the Time
      • Mary Limerick Malcomson
      • Salvation by Faith
      • The Ministry of Christ
      • Temptation
      • 2016 Sermons Limerick
      • Genesis 1-10
      • Rebuilding the Gates Nehemiah
      • The Shadow of the Cross
      • The Blood of Jesus
      • Unity in the Church
      • My Testimony
      • A Man Under Authority
      • Authority & Submission
      • Various 2017
      • Justification by Faith
      • Born Again
      • The Church
      • The Gifts of the Spirit
      • Various 2018
      • Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy
      • How to Store up Treasures in Heaven
      • How to Hear
      • Is this the Last Generation?
      • The Divine Exchange at the Cross
      • Water Baptism
      • School of Christ Convention 2018
      • The Latter Rain Covenant
      • The Marriage Covenant
      • Lost Things
      • Genesis 24
      • The Fight of Faith
      • 2019 Sermons LCC
      • Assurance of Salvation
      • Missing Links
      • Prayer
      • The Bible
      • Psalm 119
      • Grace Gifts
      • Various 2020
      • 2020 Vision
      • Battle for the Mind
      • Blood of Everlasting Covenant
      • Christ in the Crisis
      • The Corona Crisis
      • Czech Republic Page >
        • Czech 1
      • Biblical Teaching of Head Covering
      • Christ the Healer
      • Reaching Cults for Christ >
        • Candace healing testimonies
        • New Page 1
        • New Page
        • Ladies Meeting
        • Importance of church
        • Rest in the Lord
        • New Page
        • Birthday
        • Candace May 21
        • Shona test
      • Wise & Foolish Virgins
      • God's Message in an Evil Hour
      • Biblical Love
      • The Great Reset
      • Witchcraft in the Church
      • Joseph: A Vessel of Recovery
      • LCC sermons 2021
      • The Heaven's Rule
      • The Blood of Jesus & The Last Days
      • Spiritual Warfare
      • The Centrality of Christ
      • The Battle for the Mind Vol.2
      • SOC 2021
      • Raising Children Under Rising Tyranny
      • The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
      • London Conference
      • The 21st Century Church
      • The Advocate & the Accuser
      • Various 2022
      • Little Things of Scripture
      • Russia, Magog & Tarshish
      • A Heart for God
      • Social Justice & the Gospel
      • A Vessel of Revival
      • Ruin, Redemption & Regeneration
      • Candace Malcomson >
        • Candace Malcomson Funeral
        • Candace Testimonies
        • Candace Malcomson Bible Studies
        • Candace Worship & Songs
        • Candace Children's Talk
        • Candace Written Articles >
          • Christian Romance Novels
          • Christliche Romane. ROMANTISCHE ROMANE
          • Worship and Contemporary Christian Music
      • Sof
      • The Four Seasons of Life
      • Providence in the Book of Ruth
      • Daily Devotions
      • The God of the Valleys
      • Penal Substitution
    • Latest News
    • Articles >
      • Great Commission
      • Christ the Creator
      • Repentance
      • Jesus The Preacher
      • Missionary Churches
      • Leadership
      • Fasting
      • Unity in the Church
      • The Prayer Closet
      • GOD'S DWELLING PLACE IN EPHESUS
      • Things God Hates
      • CAN CHRISTIANS BE INDWELT BY DEMONS?
      • German
    • Books
  • Missions
    • Missionaries
    • Limerick Bible School
    • Encouraging Links
  • Blog
  • Contact LCC
    • Donate Page
    • LCC Events

The Real 'Saint' PATRICK

17/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
"Be truly converted with all your heart to the Lord God, because nothing is impossible for Him." – PATRICK
Patrick (390–466AD) was born and reared in a village called Bannavem Taberniae on the west coast of Britain. His grandfather, Potitus, had been a presbyter (elder, overseer) in the local church ministering the Word of God to hungry sheep. His father Calpornius was a Deacon who served in practical matters while maintaining a secular job. His mother was a godly prayerful woman. Sadly Patrick rebelled against the Gospel in the days of his youth. He was a sceptic and a rebel. Like many other young men in his village he ignored the preaching and godly rebukes of the local elders in his church and delighted to run to commit sin in secret. Shortly before his 16th birthday a large band of wild Irish raiders attacked his community as part of a large scale assault along the coast. Patrick was just one of many hundreds and thousands that were kidnapped, taken to Ireland by boat, and sold into slavery.

He quickly realised that this was God’s chastening hand upon his life for his unbelief, his disobedience, and his rejection of the Gospel. The Word of God spoken by his elders now came back to him with great power to his trembling heart. He repented and was born-again. During his six year captivity he became a man of prayer, a man of faith, and a man filled with the Holy Spirit. This was the Lord’s means to providentially train him in the Irish language and culture. Through a vision from the Lord he miraculously escaped and eventually returned home to Britain to the great joy of his family and old friends. After being made a Deacon in the local church he received a vision from the Lord calling him to return to Ireland to preach the Gospel. He grew in the study and knowledge of the Word of God, in his testimony before men, and in wisdom. Family and friends tried to persuade him not to return to Ireland. Others challenged and rejected his call. He walked through a period of fiery trial, false accusation, church-politics, and an onslaught from the devil. But this God-given vision for Ireland continued to burn as a fire in his bones. 

In about 432 AD he reached pagan Ireland with an apostolic call to win the lost to Christ. He risked his life many times and passed through many trials to reach souls for Christ. But God gave him great grace to see many thousands “re-born” during the following decades. Sons and daughters of kings gave themselves to labour for God and signs and wonders were performed in confirming the Gospel. As he traveled the land during his thirty years of ministry he left hundreds of new churches and well trained leaders behind him. The Lord used him as a vessel to begin a spiritual revival that turned pagan Ireland into the land of saints and scholars. His life and ministry was remarkable in changing the whole nation and culture of Ireland. At the time of his death he left behind an Irish church which was burning with missionary zeal and with a vision to carry the gospel back into darkened Britain and Europe which had returned again to their pagan roots. The following three hundred years were Ireland’s golden years as a centre of learning, of Bible training centres, copying of the written scriptures, which led many hundreds to go forth in missionary teams to evangelize the darkest places and people groups in Europe. 

Its worth noting that
Augustine (of Canterbury) was the first Catholic missionary sent to the south of England in 558A.D – over 100 years after Patrick had finished his ministry in Ireland. Irish missionaries who encountered Catholic missionaries rejected their authority, rejected crossing themselves and rejected them as genuine Christians. Catholicism was very hostile against the Irish church and its missionaries. It would take a further two hundred years after Patrick's death for the Catholic Church to even begin to make any inroads into the native churches in Britain and Ireland. Eventually when these native churches were taken over and grafted into Catholicism, between the 8th and 12th centuries, Patrick was turned into a Catholic Saint. His history was rewritten and it was now proclaimed for the first time that the Pope had sent him to Ireland. With the passing of the years much myth was added to the story of St. Patrick and the Irish lost and forgot the true knowledge of the real Patrick who was a real born-again, Bible-believing, blood-washed, child of God. After he was long dead the Pope canonized him to make him a Catholic ‘Saint’ but Christ had already sanctified him and made him holy through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Blood of Jesus, and the Word of God. We call him a saint just like every other true born-again Christian is called a saint because he lived a holy consecrated life as the fruit of genuine salvation while he was still alive.
“I am greatly a debtor to the God who has bestowed on me such grace, that many people through me should be born-again to God…” – PATRICK

1 Comment

Surrender to God's Plan

8/3/2015

4 Comments

 
Excerpts from Repentance Series, School of Christ by B.H. Clendennen 
Picture
Man, in his rebellion against God, by choice, partook of that which God had commanded him not to take. At that moment, man became his own centre.  God was no longer the centre of his being.  Man became his own centre and “self” became his god.  Since the fall blinded man has ever continued to make himself central. 

We may be centred in an experience, a group, an emphasis of truth; we may be centred in a spiritual person, our work, or a religious cause.  All of these are false centres.

Believers may not realize it, but we are either centred in man or we are centred in God.  Every choice we make in life becomes the test.  Every test, every temptation, is whether you are going to remain centred in God or be centred in yourself.  There is no alternative.  Either God is the centre of our universe and we have become rightly adjusted to Him, or we have made ourselves the centre.  When the centre is wrong, then everything in our reckoning is wrong.  

The little choruses that we sing today, for the most part, have to do with man. Man has become the centre.  Man has become the focus. From his point of view, concepts and methods become twisted until it seems the church is presenting a God whose entire working is for man’s blessing and happiness. 

Perhaps you have wondered why the church has not come to maturity as God intended. The reason is that it is man-centred. The secret of realizing God’s ultimate purpose is to be found in the correction of our starting point. God must become my centre and my desire.

Make no appeal for man to come to God in order to be happy and to be blessed. Our approach is to urge men to wake up and become adjusted to the purpose for which they were created.

Modern believers have imagined they can win men by arguing with them. This is a farce which means they have won us. The hour is too late for us to continue to play with the surface issues. We must turn from our selfish playthings and cease our man-centred attempts to make religion serve us.

God must become my centre and my desire. God’s desire must be my desire, and God’s will my will.  My wants must be God’s wants. “Our Father which art in heaven…”
In that prayer Jesus moved the centre to God. Recognizing that man has become the centre, there has to be a genuine repentance.  A repentance of what we have allowed ourselves to become. May God make it a revelation to the heart.


4 Comments

'O Love that will not let me Go'

1/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Without Jesus Christ as Lord of his life, young Scotsman, George Matheson (1842-1906), would surely have taken his own life or died a bitter man, because what happened to him is one of the most bitter tragedies to strike a human heart. 

At University George met a beautiful young woman and they fell in love. They talked of marriage but George felt it only fair to inform his future wife of an impending condition which would change his life in years to come. George had a disease which would render him totally blind within a few short years. When he told his fiancée of this certainty, she utterly astonished him by telling him bluntly, “I do not want to be the wife of a blind man.” Years later on the eve of George’s sister’s wedding, the memory of the broken engagement opened a fresh wound in his heart and through the pain he began to contemplate a love that would never be broken or alter—the Love of Christ. His mind dwelt on the love of His Saviour, and the Word of God which filled this godly Church of Scotland preacher, caused his heart to well up with the assurance that Christ would never let him go. In the pangs of loss he found richest gain.  Rev. Dr. Matheson never married but was a revered preacher who impressed Queen Victoria so much that she presented the blind preacher with a small sculpture of herself in memory of the great sermon on Job that he preached before her.
 


O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.


O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

1 Comment

    Limerick City Church

    We are a church that has a real burden for the city of Limerick. We are praying that many will experience true salvation in Christ and that the Lord will pour out His Holy Spirit in a genuine revival.

    Categories

    All
    B.h. Clendennen
    Faith
    Hymn
    Men Of Faith
    Shiloh
    The Church

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2022
    August 2020
    May 2018
    April 2018
    November 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013