Jesus Christ

Costa Concordia

2012-01-29T10:56:00.001-07:00

The crash happened when the captain deviated from his planned route, creating a huge gash that capsized the ship.

God created us & has a plan for our lives. We can know his plan as we listen to his voice & submit to his word.
Not following his instructions can lead to a shipwreck of our lives.

Let's return to the God of the bible. He will bring healing to our lives.

God wants to help us

2012-01-28T14:41:00.001-07:00

Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come; from the sevenfold Spirit before his throne; (Revelation 1:4 NLT)

Jesus Christ gives us grace upon grace. He died for us when we were helpless sinners. Let us be like him and be willing to help in his church and serve our fellow man.

Faith

2012-01-26T22:33:00.001-07:00

Do you have faith in God's perfect love for you, his almighty power and his infinite wisdom?

Faith is a gift from God & comes by hearing the word of Christ. Rom. 10: 17

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6 NASB)

Jesus is coming quickly

2012-01-26T12:16:00.001-07:00

"Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." (Revelation 22:12, 13 NASB)

In the beginning God

2012-01-26T11:59:00.001-07:00

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 NASB)

How blessed~

2012-01-21T13:06:00.001-07:00

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1, 2 NASB)

Are you worried?

2011-12-24T12:04:00.001-07:00

“Overheard in an Orchard”

by Elizabeth Cheney

Said the robin to the sparrow,
"I would really like to know
Why those anxious human beings
rush around and worry so."

Said the sparrow to the robin,
"Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
such as cares for you and me."

Jesus is Lord!

2011-12-10T18:18:00.001-07:00

He says "follow me"

The times

2011-11-19T00:02:00.001-07:00

Jesus never told us to predict a day or hour when He would return, but He did tell us to be aware of the times in which we live and to always be ready for His coming. We may not be able to know the exact place on God's prophetic timeline, but there are many things taking place that indicate we are in a time like no other.

The world is not doing well—iniquity and lawlessness abound; kingdoms rise against kingdoms; the financial security and stability of the world continues to stagger and shake under the weight of debt and greed; all creation groans; people's hearts fail them because of fear; Israel faces its greatest opposition and threat to its existence since it became a nation in 1948; opposition to and persecution of the body of Christ continues to intensify.

What are we to do and how are we to live in the light of all that is taking place around us? Look up! God has a plan and He is working out His plan. The coming of the Lord is drawing near. He is not a long way down the road, or just over the next hill; rather, He is close, even at the door.

Here are four things God wants us to be doing as we await the sound of the trump of God and our gathering together unto Him.

Guard your heart: In Matthew 24: 12 Jesus tells us that in the last days sin will cause the hearts of many to grow cold. Place around your heart the shield of faith and fight the good fight of faith against every doubt that comes against the Word of God and the character of God. Keep within your heart your passion and zeal for the ways of God and the presence of God. Let His fire burn within you as a holy flame, causing the glow and glory of His face to shine upon you.

Come together with other believers: In Hebrews 10:25 we are told to gather together with other believers, especially as we see the day of Lord approaching. This is not the time to isolate and separate yourself from other believers. You need their love, support, encouragement, and prayers; and they need yours.

Make Christ known: In Matthew 24: 14 Jesus tells us that before the end comes, the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the world. We are not to lose focus. We are here on assignment from God. He has called us to proclaim the Gospel and to make Christ known in our generation. The Gospel message is God's message to a lost world, and it is only through the Gospel that the lost can be found, the blind can see, and the dead can be made to live. There is still time to be saved.

Be full of hope: In Titus 2:13 we are reminded that as believers we are to live in hope. This hope isn't based on what the world will do, on what the financial markets will do, or on what political leaders will do. Our hope is based on what God will do. Our hope is so great and so sure that the Scriptures call our hope the "blessed hope." What is this blessed hope? It is the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ! Think of it, as a believer, you will see Jesus; not as your judge to condemn you, but as your Savior to receive you and bring you into His everlasting kingdom…so you shall forever be with the Lord!

Faith

2011-11-06T16:39:00.001-07:00

For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. Romans 1:17 (KJV)

There are two ways that we can walk through a day. One is to walk by sight and the other is to walk by faith. To walk by faith means to walk in a different kind of reality. The Bible tells us that there are two realities (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). One reality is what is seen; the other reality is what is unseen. There are two realities because there are two worlds. One is the physical world; the other is the spiritual world. The physical world is the temporary world; the spiritual world is the eternal world.

Today, as a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ, you live in both worlds. Through your senses you connect with the physical world, and with your heart and spirit you connect with the spiritual world. Your spiritual reality is not based upon wishful thinking or some unknown mystic influence, but upon the truth of God’s word, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the life of Jesus Christ.

Faith sees what your physical eyes can never see;
Faith knows what your natural mind can never comprehend;
Faith possesses what your physical arms can never hold.
Faith says “yes” to everything God declares to be true;
Faith stands upon everything God says is certain, it leans upon everything God says is unmovable, and it counts upon everything God says will come to pass.

RL

Faith

2011-11-04T18:32:00.001-07:00

What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. So, you see, it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that there is a God and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him. Hebrews 11:1, 6 (NLT)

Your faith in God today is your lifeline to His heartbeat. Faith is the hand that reaches up and takes hold of God’s promises and gathers in the spiritual treasures that are found in Christ. Faith sees the sunshine of God’s face, even when there are dark clouds all around.

When the things that you are experiencing don’t make sense, faith says, “God knows what He is doing.”
When your resources don’t match your need, faith says, “God is my provider.”
When you are fearful to take the next step, faith says, “God will not fail me.”
When you’re not sure what to do next, faith says, “God will guide me.”
When you are in a situation that seems impossible, faith says, “Nothing is too hard for the Lord.”

What things are possible for you today through faith? All things are possible, because your faith is in the God who knows no impossibilities.

John 3:16

2011-10-31T09:04:00.003-07:00

God loves you!

The Power of God

2011-10-11T14:08:00.001-06:00

Through God we shall do valiantly, And it is He who will tread down our
adversaries. Ps. 60:12

Great is the lord!

2011-09-20T20:11:00.001-06:00

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, In the city of our God, His holy mountain. (Psalm 48:1

Strong

2011-09-08T09:48:00.000-06:00

"God is my strong fortress; And He sets the blameless in His way. "He makes my feet like hinds' feet, And sets me on my high places. "He trains my hands for battle, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. "You have also given me the shield of Your salvation, And Your help makes me great. (2 Samuel 22:33-36 NASB)

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

cherish~

2011-08-28T19:18:00.010-06:00

When I'm with you,
time flies away,
my love continues to grow,
with each passing day.

This treasure of love,
I cherish within my soul,
how much I love you...
you'll never really know.

You bring a joy to my heart,
I've never felt before,
with each hug of your hands,
I love you more and more.

Whenever we say goodbye,
whenever we part,
know I hold you dearly,
deep inside my heart.

So these seven words, hannah
I pray you hold true,
"Forever And Always,
I Will Love You."

Faith

2011-08-27T22:17:00.001-06:00

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 NASB)

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Please pray for the persecuted church

2011-08-27T03:55:00.001-06:00

Monica Dra and her husband heard the marchers outside their small home in Nigeria on July 26, 2009. They heard the chants of "Allahu Akbar" and wondered what the night would hold for them and other Christians in their village.

HELP VOMEDICAL provide care to victims of persecution like Monica Dra.

"We had heard rumors all night that there were going to be problems," Monica told VOM, "and now I could hear them walking and slaughtering people as they went." Monica's husband, Daniel James, grabbed her, and they ran outside to escape the radical Muslim mob. But the radicals grabbed Daniel and hacked him to death with a machete.

Monica began to run, with her Bible and hymn book tucked under her arm. But members of the chanting mob grabbed her and began striking her with machetes. Seeing a cross on a chain around Monica's neck, a militant began to chop at her neck, nearly decapitating her. By the time Monica got to the hospital, she could only breathe through the gaping wound left by the lethal blade.

"I thought, 'I am a Christian,'" she said. "I am dying today."

But Monica didn't die. After six surgeries to repair her throat and close the wound in her neck, doctors were able to save her voice. Through VOMedical, Monica, a poor widow with a 5-year-old child, received excellent medical care and post-op follow-up. Thanks to generous donations from VOM supporters, Monica is among the more than 600 Christians who have received medical care after being injured because of their Christian faith.

Monica now needs only one more surgery to regain her normal speaking voice. "Now that I have my strength back, I have forgiven my attackers," Monica said. "Now I have more courage to serve the Lord much more."

We don't know where the next attack will occur. Nigeria? Indonesia? China? But VOMedical is committed to serving those who are injured by acts of persecution. Your generous support enables us to act immediately, providing care and healing to our persecuted family members.

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Turn to him

2011-08-09T17:56:00.000-06:00

God loves you and me. He demonstrated his love for us by sending his ONLY son to suffer the consequences for our sins.

He asks us to turn from our sins and make Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives.

God speaks to us through the bible. He is waiting to hear from you for he cares for you.

Jesus is coming again!

2011-08-09T17:41:00.000-06:00

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

2011-08-09T17:38:00.001-06:00

Jesus is lord!

humble

2011-03-26T09:04:00.000-07:00

Thus says the Lord "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is
My footstool...
To this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite
of spirit, and who trembles at my word. Isaiah 66: 1,2

don't worry

2011-02-23T13:46:00.001-07:00

Anxiety—don’t carry it, walk with it, eat with it, live with it, go to bed with it. Don’t entertain it, support it, encourage it—not in big things or little things, present things or future things, pressing things or perplexing things. It is a foe not a friend, a downer not an edifier, a binder not a freer. It will quickly introduce you to its close cousins, fret and fear. When anxiety knocks at the door of your heart or mind, be sure to renounce it, reject it, and refuse it any place.Instead of being anxious about anything, you can begin to pray about everything. Prayer means that you have a God to go to and to talk to, who hears and answers prayer. Mix your prayers with thankfulness. Thanksgiving reflects an attitude of gratefulness to God for inviting you to come to Him, and it shows that you truly trust Him to take care of you, regardless of your circumstances.As you pray and trust God to work, He will give you the assurance that He is in control. He will do this by giving you His peace. God doesn’t give you circumstantial peace, but His peace, a peace which remains constant and undisturbed through every circumstance.God’s peace is His answer for anxiety. His peace will quiet you and calm you; it will minister health to your nerves and rest to your spirit. God’s peace is more powerful than anxiety, fear, or worry, and His peace will defeat any foe that tries to attack your heart and mind. At the heart of these attacks is an attempt to have you to turn your faith away from God and to focus instead on your needs and circumstances. God’s peace strengthens you from these attacks by giving you the assurance that God is for you and that no weapon formed against you will prosper.Never turn away from God’s peace. Yield and surrender your heart and mind to His peace. Say, “Yes, Lord, I receive Your peace.” You do not need to understand why certain things are happening in order to have God’s peace. His peace transcends your understanding. God’s peace is the same peace that Jesus said He would give to you. It is a peace that the world cannot give you. His peace belongs to you because you belong to Him. Phil. 4:6

Roy lessin

depend on God

2011-02-07T17:31:00.001-07:00

My times are in your hand." Psalm 31:15Let this precious truth divest your mind of all needless, anxious care for the present or the future. Exercising simple faith in God, "Do not be anxious about anything." Learn to be content with your present lot, with God's dealings with, and His disposal of, you. You are just where His providence has, in its inscrutable but all-wise and righteous decision, placed you. It may be a position painful, irksome, trying, but it is right. Oh, yes! it is right. Only aim to glorify Him in it. Wherever you are placed, God has a work for you to do, a purpose through you to be accomplished, in which He blends your happiness with His glory…live a life of daily dependence upon God…it saves from many a desponding feeling, from many a corroding care, from many an anxious thought, from many a sleepless night. -Octavius Winslow

the free offer of mercy

2011-01-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ho! Every one who thirsts. Come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Is. 55:1

continue

2011-01-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

Continue in the things that concern Him;He will continue to take care of the things that concern you. Continue to give Him all that is yours;He will continue to give you all that is His. Continue to wait upon Him;He will continue to be faithful to you. Continue to seek His highest;He will continue to give you His best. ‘Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Do everything as I say, and all will be well!’ Jeremiah 7:23 NLT

Roy lessin

faith without works is dead

2011-01-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

A man is justified by works, and not by faith alone..for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. James 2: 24-26

God is for you!

2010-12-29T11:48:00.001-07:00

God is for you.God loves you.God will guide you.God will not fail you.God will be with you.God will provide for you.God will bless you.God will give you rest.God will strengthen you.God will answer you.God will uphold you.God will keep you.

David Brainerd - a man of God~

2010-12-19T13:50:00.001-07:00

He was only 29 when he died...his gravestone simply says, "A faithful and laborious missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware and Susquehanna tribes of Indians." But in truth David Brainerd's life sacrifice reached out and touched the whole world, challenging more people into Christian service than perhaps any other man that ever lived. The mere mention of the name, Brainerd, automatically triggers the mind to think of dedication in a way that perhaps has never been equaled. He would travel 15,000 miles on horseback. One small compelling book — David Brainerd's Journal which he kept from June 19, 1745, to June 19, 1746, plus his diaries of his days before and after this time are still used of God today to inspire and convict the Christian world in the matter of Christian service.

David was the sixth of nine children born into the home of Hezekiah and Dorothy (Mason) Brainerd. Details of his childhood are scanty, but he grew up in a country house just above the west bank of the Connecticut River, two miles outside of Haddam. His father was a country squire, a local justice of the peace, and a Christian, as was his mother. His father died when he was nine and the death of his mother in March, 1732 brought additional great grief to 14 year old David, who was by then seeking to find what conversion was all about. From ages 15 to 19 he lived with his sister Jerusha who had just married Samuel Spencer. In April, 1738, he returned to Haddam to live and to study with the pastor of his youth, Phineas Fiske. Brainerd soon became a serious student of the Bible, and ignored the other pleasures in which most young people were participating. Fiske died in the fall, and Brainerd, like Luther, continued desperately seeking peace with God. By February, 1739, he was setting aside whole days of secret fasting and almost incessant prayer as he strove for acceptance with God.

Finally on July 12, 1739, as he returned to his secret place of prayer, God spoke to him as light dawning, and he had a glorious salvation experience. Now he wondered why all the world could not see "this lovely, blessed, and excellent way." He states as he was walking in a dark thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of his soul. He was then 21 years of age.

In September, 1739, David entered Yale University. It was a terribly cold winter and a bout with the measles laid him aside that first year. Trying to catch up only caused greater maladies and by August, 1740, he was weak and spitting up blood. Consumption or tuberculosis of the lungs was the plague of colonial New England. He returned to Yale on about November 6, 1740, to see a marked spiritual change in the school. George Whitefield had visited Yale on October 27th, and it seemed a pentecostal flame had hit the school. Gil Tennent of New Jersey had also preached with great power in March of 1740 in New Haven. Brainerd and two other students were soon distinguished for their zeal and visited many other students "for conversation and prayer." On April 19, Ebenezer Pembertson visited Yale and gave a stirring address about missionary work to the Indians. The next day, on his 23rd birthday, Brainerd vowed "to be wholly the Lord's, to be forever devoted to his service."

The Great Awakening was now at its peak, and despite Jonathan Edwards' efforts to keep everything in decency and order, things got out of hand. Tennent had preached his impassioned sermon, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, simply reinforcing Whitefield's sentiments. People began to turn against their ministers and hold "separate" meetings.

So as a result, as Brainerd entered his third year at Yale in the fall of 1741, a rule was made, "Voted, that if any student of this College shall directly or indirectly say, that the Rector, either of the Trustees or Tutors are hypocrites, carnal or unconverted men, he shall for the first offense make a public confession in the Hall, and for the second offense be expelled." Soon in a private conversation, when asked what he thought about a certain tutor, David replied, "He has no more grace than this chair." This charge was harsh, and based only on one prayer of the leader, which David called, "unusually pathetical." Actually, the man was quite spiritual. A freshman overheard and reported the conversation. When Brainerd refused to publicly confess this, which he felt was a private matter, he was expelled in February, 1742. Afterwards he sought forgiveness, wrote out a full and complete confession, and had others intercede for him...but to no avail. The authorities would not reinstate him.

On April 20th (24th birthday) Brainerd wrote, "...I hardly ever so longed to live to God and to be altogether devoted to Him; I wanted to wear out my life in his service and for his glory..." He waged a constant fight against the bitterness of his disappointment over his expulsion from Yale. In June he began to spend some days in fasting and prayer. He was at a loss as to what the Lord wanted him to do. On July 29, 1742, he was licensed to preach as a Presbyterian at Danbury, Connecticut. He spent the summer with another young bachelor friend — Joseph Bellamy. They worshipped and preached in a barn which served as a meeting house for Bellamy's small congregation in Woodbury, Connecticut. Brainerd's first sermon was on July 30th at Southbury, Connecticut, using I Peter 4:8 as his text and his first message to the Indians was soon after, on August 12, near the Connecticut-New York border. He traveled as an itinerant preacher for several months. In September, 1742, he had to leave New Haven quickly for unlawful preaching.

On November 19th, he received a summons from Pemberton of New York City, to come and discuss the question of ministry to the Indians in those parts. On November 25 he met with the commissioners of the Scotch Society. As part of his examination, he delivered a sermon, most probably in Pemberton's church. He was grieved for the congregation, "that they should sit there to hear such a dead dog as I preach." He felt he was totally unworthy to preach to others so much better than himself.

He preached from place to place in the winter, including a farewell sermon to his family and friends in a home in East Haddam on February 1, 1743. He then served as a supply preacher at East Hampton, Long Island, New York for six weeks. On his last Sunday there, March 13th, although he could hardly stand up, he preached for an hour and a half. The congregation pressed him to stay permanently. But the next day, he left for work among the Indians. He said later, "I never, since I began to preach, could feel any freedom to enter into other men's labours and settle down in the ministry where the gospel was preached before." He felt he had to preach where Christ was not named nor known. He left for his life's work March 25, 1743.

He was assigned to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and arrived there March 31, 1743, and began his ministry the next day. He was stationed 20 miles west between Stockbridge and the Hudson River at a place called Kaunaumeek, 18 miles south east of Albany. Without conversation, or company, he was very lonely even though the Indians were cordial to him. On April 20th (25th birthday) he spent the day fasting alone in the woods in prayer. His diet was hasty-pudding, boiled corn, and bread baked in ashes. His lodging was a heap of straw, laid upon boards in a log room without any floor. He traveled one and one half miles each way daily on foot in order to see the Indians. A Stockbridge Christian became his interpreter and friend. Brainerd learned to pray with the Indians in their language. They translated Psalms and hymns, and started an "English" school. By the first of August he had completed building his hut and had a better place to sleep. But other problems mounted. He had to go or send ten or more miles for bread to eat and it would turn moldy and sour before he could eat all of it. The presence and worldly conversation of some irreligious Dutchmen oppressed him more than all the difficulties of his wilderness life. He made four brief trips to New York during this time, his last one including a stop at New Haven to observe the commencement exercises of September 14, 1743 in which he should have been included. One final attempt to have him reinstated with Jonathan Edwards and Aaron Burr interceding was to no avail. Stopping at Bellamy's he became seriously ill. Recovering sufficiently he returned to his station, Kaunaumeek, on October 4th.

On the day after Christmas, he wrote, "Was very much fatigued with my journey, wherein I underwent great hardships; was very much exposed and very wet by falling into a river." The ordination of a friend, Samuel Hopkins, that week left him depressed as he could not understand the accompanying levity, celebration and food. In January, 1744, he spent the middle of the winter alone in his little hut, yet they were happy hours. On Sunday March 11, he preached his last sermon at Kaunaumeek, as he was now seeking new tribes to win to Christ.

He again received a call to East Hampton, to be the pastor. Suffering weakness and headache, he died inwardly to two attractive calls, writing, "Resolved to go on still with the Indian affair, if divine providence permitted; although I had before felt some inclination to go to East Hampton." His other call to Millington was likewise turned down.

The commissioners instructed him to go to Pennsylvania. He again had a serious sick spell for three days, and went home to Haddam for the first time in 15 months. Now 26 years of age, he left home again. He left Kaunaumeek, April 30.

Spending some days at Salisbury, Connecticut, he left May 7th arriving on May 13th at present day Easton, Pennsylvania, within the forks of the Delaware River.

Brainerd was well received by the Indians and usually taught them in the chief's house. Traveling some 70 miles back to New York, Brainerd was ordained on June 11, 1744, by the Presbytery of New York. On June 19th he left friends and benefactors to seek again God's chosen ones in the remote wilderness.

By the end of the summer some 40 Indians were listening to his message. He was plagued with pain, and had difficulty controlling his legs after long hours on horseback. He also had to cope with Tattamy, his interpreter, who was totally unfamiliar with the white man's Bible. In July a flicker of heart interest by the Indians caused him to work hard preaching and translating. One time he was asking the Lord to take him home. Then he heard the Indians intended to have an idolatrous feast and dance. Desire to live surged back into him as he used his only weapon — prayer, and the Indians changed their plans.

During this time he lived much of the time with the Hunter family at a place known as Hunter's Settlement. Brainerd was the supply minister to the whites there, along with his ministry to the Indians. The rest of the summer he lay in "illness and uselessness." The first week of August he preached to the Indians twice, although "obligated to sit down the whole time." By September he was somewhat recovered and took a three week vacation. It was a journey of recuperation and pleasure, of visiting home and friends back in New England.

He now had a desire to go westward to reach the Indians on the Susquehanna River. Brainerd, an associate Eliab Bryam, Tattamy and two other Indians left on October 2. His horse fell down and broke her leg, so Brainerd killed her, and continued to the nearest house 30 miles away on foot. The picture of the two young ministers alternately riding their one horse must have been intriguing. They were well received by the Indians, spent a few days there, and then returned the 70 miles where a new horse was given to Brainerd on October 12.

Resuming his life, sick and lonely, alternately cheerful and dejected, he began to build a house for himself with the help of others. Moving into his new quarters he spent December 6 in prayer and fasting, "to implore the blessing of God on myself, on my poor people, on my friends, and on the church of God." Beginning at Christmas he went through a terrible month of despondency. Things brightened up on Sunday, February 17, 1745, when he preached to a group of white people coming from scattered frontier homes to have Communion. He greatly appreciated his friends, both white and Indian, and on March 7 he left them for a five week trip to New England. In March and April, he rode more than 600 miles searching New Jersey, New York and Connecticut to find a companion, and the support for the same. This goal was not realized, for none was, "qualified or disposed for this good work." So he returned alone to the Forks of the Delaware to continue his work. On April 20 (27th birthday) he was at the Abington Presbyterian Church, between Philadelphia and Neshaminy for a three-day ministry.

Weak in body, Brainerd and Tattamy left May 8th for their first major trip to the interior Indians along the Susquehanna River. By passing the original contact they had made the previous October, they reached Shamokin, the headquarters for several tribes of Indians, stopped off at other settlements and returned home, the roundtrip taking 22 days. The 340 mile journey left Brainerd weak and dejected, depressed and disillusioned about the prospects among the Indians in that area. Except for Tattamy and his wife, who both were growing spiritually, he considered his past year almost a failure. He returned May 30.

He then heard about a group of Indians at a place called Crossweeksung (9 miles southeast of Trenton) in New Jersey, about 80 miles southeast of the Forks of Delaware. He arrived June 19, 1745. He spent two weeks there with a good deal of conviction, tears and interest amongst the Indians. Upon his return to the Forks, these Indians also seemed to be much more responsive to his ministry. On July 21 he baptized Tattamy and his wife, his first converts among the Indians. He went back to Crossweeksung and experienced the most glorious week in his life. On August 8 the power of God came down on his little group of 65 as he preached. The sudden and unexpected seizer of the Indians was followed by earnest prayers. Many genuine conversions took place. News traveled, and soon other Indians were coming to hear the young white preacher. Members of the careless white community began to show up also, and get converted. On August 25, he baptized 25 of the Indians and the years of prayer and suffering were beginning to bear some fruit.

He decided to make one last effort to evangelize the Indians along the Susquehanna River and spent the month of September (9-28) attempting this, but with no apparent success. Back at Crossweeksung on October 5, he was overjoyed at the difference to the response of the Gospel. Others were saved and baptized. Christmas had a new meaning to both preacher and hearer, and after two years of barrenness Brainerd rejoiced greatly as he reaped some spiritual fruit.

On January 31, 1746 another milestone was reached — Brainerd engaged a schoolmaster for the Indians and a dozen primers were passed out. In February he visited his "parish" back at the Forks being "under great weakness and some pain." Some evangelists (Indian converts) from Crossweeksung went with him. He encouraged some of his former friends at the Fork to move to Crossweeksung. Back at this site he had a very ill week in mid-March. He encouraged the Indians to develop spring planting at a settlement at Cranberry, 15 miles distant, which they did. His attempt to colonize the converts as farmers was not successful. There were now about 150 who followed him and his directions. On April 20 (28th birthday) he preached the Easter story from Luke 24 to the Indians. On April 27th another milestone was reached — the Indians took the Lord's Supper. He settled down at Cranberry on May 3rd, and a place of worship was established known as Bethel. He was tempted to stay here. However back in his heart were the pagan Indians of the Susquehanna River area where he had already failed three times to make any headway.

Finally on August 12, he left his friends at Cranberry and with six Indian evangelists attempted his fourth trip to the Susquehanna River area. He had never gone further west than Shamokin before, but now he desired to go an additional 100 miles to a site near present day Lockhaven, Pennsylvania. He recorded such things as "...sweat much in the night, so that my linen was almost wringing wet all night, was exceedingly weak, so that I could scarcely ride; it seemed sometimes as if I must fall off from my horse, and lie in the open woods..."

This trip finally broke his health completely, and he had to curtail much of it. Many might ask, "why did he go on this journey despite his great weakness and ill health?" He simply could not confine himself to one spot, when so many men were dying without Christ everywhere. Back at Shamokin on September 6, he clung to his life, "coughing and spitting blood." On September 20 he arrived back at Cranberry. Brainerd now realized that the tuberculosis of his lungs was going to destroy his body. He felt somewhat guilty in that he had recklessly injured his health and aggravated his illness. But in reality, his zeal and outdoor life probably prolonged his days, since his problem had started several years prior while at Yale. On October 6, he had his last blessed day at Cranberry, having the Lord's Supper with 40 of his converts and baptizing two adults. His final harvest was now 85 Indians. November 3 was his last day as pastor of his flock in Cranberry. He spent the long winter in Elizabethtown, New Jersey with Jonathan Dickinson. Rallying in health he made one last visit to his Indian converts on March 18-20, 1747, and bid them goodbye for the last time. On April 20 (29th birthday) he spent the day mostly in bed at the Dickinsons. He left for New England the next day, not realizing that his 59 year old host would pass on two days before Brainerd. Brainerd was invited to Jonathan Edwards' house, by probably both the preacher and his 17 year old daughter, Jerusha, whom Brainerd had greatly admired even as a young teen-age girl. He visited his kin-folk at Haddam, (May 1) bidding farewell to his favorite sister, Jerusha Spencer, little realizing that he would get news of her death in two more months. Arriving at the Edwards' home on May 28, he was vastly better and cheerful. David's petition in family prayer was usually "that we might not outlive our usefulness." Jerusha was his nurse for 19 weeks, devoting herself with great delight because she looked on him as an eminent servant of Jesus Christ. He wrote letters signing them, "your dying brother". He took his last horseback ride and prayed with the family for the last time on August 11th. A room on the first floor was set aside for him the following week as he could not climb steps. He went to church for the last time September 2nd. Edwards described his last days — swollen feet — constant pain — discharge of purulent matter — broken whispers — agonies of body. His last Sunday, October 4th, he recorded this touching conversation with Jerusha, in appreciation of her constant companionship and love.

"Dear Jerusha...though, if I thought I should not see you, and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part with you. But we shall spend a happy eternity together."
On Wednesday he discussed his Indian work with his brother John, who succeeded him at Bethel, and on Friday, October 9, it was all over. His last words were "He will come, and will not tarry. I shall soon be in glory; soon be with God and His angels." He was buried on Monday with Jonathan Edwards conducting the funeral. Four months later, grieving Jerusha, in her 18th year, took sick and in five days, on February 14, 1748, joined David in heaven and was buried next to him.

John Wesley said, "Let every preacher read carefully over the life of David Brainerd," and distributed his life story to all his societies. F. W. Robertson, Ion Keith Falconer, Robert Murray McCheyne, A. J. Gordon, Francis Asbury, Jim Elliott, Thomas Coke, William Carey and Henry Martyn all were motivated to service through Brainerd, amongst others.

this is my fathers world

2010-12-05T15:49:00.006-07:00

" If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for all the world is mine and everything in it." Psalm 50:12 (NLT)
***

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.

This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?
The lord is King—let the heavens ring. God reigns—let the earth be glad.
This is my Father’s world. Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.

This is my Father’s world. I walk a desert lone.
In a bush ablaze to my wondering gaze God makes His glory known.
This is my Father’s world, a wanderer I may roam
Whate’er my lot, it matters not,
My heart is still at home.

words: Maltbie D. Babcock
arranged by Franklin L. Sheppard

Only the Bible~

2010-12-04T19:17:00.012-07:00

The God of Science

Science is a systematic knowledge of the physical or material universe gained by observable facts. The sacred writings of all world religions basically contain a system of faith. Yet each do make statements within the province of science that provides a uniquely valid test to prove their authenticity. If their scientific observations are in reality superstitions reflective of the culture in which they were written, these so called sacred books are disqualified as the inspired Scripture of God. If, indeed, the scientific observations of any of these purported Holy Scripture agree with the facts of science today, then that Bible is the inspired Word of a true and living God. Why? The Creator and God of the universe is the God of science — the author of the scientific laws that govern His universe. Only the God of science could cause scientific facts to be recorded in a book —the Bible — hundreds or thousands of years before scientists discover them.

Only the Bible contains scientific facts that anticipated scientific discovery by hundreds and in some cases several thousand years. The following are examples of remarkable scientific observations found in the Judeo-Christian Bible.

What Holds the Earth Up?

Three thousand years ago the Hindu scriptures recorded the earth was resting on the backs of several huge elephants. The elephants were resting on the back of a very large turtle that was swimming in a sea. Greek mythology claims that the god Atlas was holding the earth on his shoulders. But our Bible says in Job 26:7 — "[God] hangeth the earth on nothing." What a remarkable statement of fact. The earth is suspended in space. Nothing is holding it up. Job wrote about the same time the Hindu Scripture was written. How did Job know this scientific fact? Only God could have revealed this to Job. The Old Testament prophets wrote as they were moved by the holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). The Bible is the inspired Word of God.

Flat Versus Round Earth

For thousands of years people believed the earth was flat. If one went too far, he would fall over the edge. This was taught in both Hindu and Buddhist scripture. In the 1500s, the first ship sailed around the world. This proved the earth was round. But the round earth was recorded in the Judeo-Christian Bible long before man discovered it in the 1500s.

The prophet Isaiah (40:22) spoke of the "circle of the earth." Solomon wrote, "He [God] set a compass [circle] upon the face of the deep." Proverbs 8:27. In our century, Arabs spoke of infidels being pushed over the edge into space. About 3,000 years ago, our Bible said the earth was round. This was not discovered until 500 years ago. Indeed, the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

Sun, Moon and Stars — Who? What?

Ancient people were afraid of the sun, moon and stars. They thought they were alive — that they were gods. But over 5,000 years ago, the Bible in the first chapter of Genesis pointed out that the sun, moon and stars were created by God. Remember, our God states that He is the one and only God. This proves the sun, moon and stars that He created are not gods.

Eclipses are an example of what people feared. An eclipse happens when the sun’s light is blocked by the earth or moon. The moon is bright because it reflects the sun’s light. But when the earth blocks that light, the moon looks like it is disappearing. Also, when the moon comes between the earth and the sun, it looks like the sun is disappearing.

This was frightening to people long ago. Some thought eclipses happened when the moon was mad at the earth and turned its face away. The Chinese believed that an eclipse was caused by a demon or some huge animal that ate the sun and then would give them up again. God told Jeremiah (10:2 KJ): "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them." God went on to reassure Jeremiah that the universe is under God’s control.

Later scientists learned that heavenly bodies were not alive and that man need not fear them. Thousands of years before scientists discovered that the planetary bodies were inanimate, the Bible contained this scientific fact.

The Bottom of the Ocean

Until modern times people thought the ocean floor was sandy like the desert and saucer shaped—deepest in the middle. This was even true of the pre-1900 geologists. But in the 1900s oceanographers found the sea had many deep valleys or canyons. The deepest canyons were called trenches. The Marianas Trench in the Pacific is so deep that if Mt. Everest (29,000 feet high) was dropped into it, the peak would still be a mile below the water’s surface. There are also underwater mountains. The Atlantic Ocean contains an undersea range of mountains 10,000 miles long.

In addition, 3,000 years ago the Bible spoke of the valleys and mountains of the sea. In Psalm 18:15 (NIV) David wrote of God being the creator of "the valleys of the sea." God asked Job (38:16 NIV): "Have you walked in the recesses [valleys] of the sea?" The prophet Jonah was thrown off a ship and spoke of falling to the bottom of the mountains in the sea (Jonah 2:6).

The Bible spoke of the valleys and mountains of the sea thousands of years before scientists discovered them. Indeed our Bible is the inspired Word of God.

The Paths of the Sea

In the 1800s, Matthew Maury, an officer in the United States Navy believed his Bible. As a Christian he loved to read the Bible. One day Maury was reading about the dominion man was given over the animals in Psalm 8. He was amazed that verse 8 spoke of the fish and all creatures that swim in the "paths of the sea." "Paths of the sea"— how could this be? He never knew there was such a thing. He was determined to find them. Maury discovered that the oceans have many paths or currents, which were like rivers flowing through the sea. Maury wrote the first book on oceanography and became known as "the pathfinder of the seas"— "The father of modern navigation."

Maury received his idea about ocean currents from reading Psalm 8:8 which was written about 3,000 years ago by King David. David wrote as he was moved by the Spirit of God and probably never actually saw an ocean.

Incidentally, Psalm 8:8 also spoke of fish in the "paths of the seas." All fishing boats make a good catch in the currents or paths of the sea. They have learned this is where the fish swim.

Lightning, Thunder and Rain

In ancient times, most religious scripture taught that lightning bolts were missiles thrown in anger by their gods.9 In China, Taoist scripture regarded the rainbow as a deadly rain dragon.10 In Confucius scripture, the goddess of lightning, Tien Mu, flashed light on intended victims to enable Lei Kung, the god of thunder to launch his deadly bolts accurately.11

Since rain is so necessary to life, ancient people pondered what caused it. Some tried to stab holes in the clouds with spears. The Vedas (Hindu scripture) advised to tie a frog with its mouth open to the right tree and say the right words and rain would fall.

Our Bible also talks about rain, lightning and storms. But it contains none of these superstitious ideas found in the other so- called scriptures. The Bible taught that earth’s weather followed rules and cycles. Genesis 8:22. "While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

Job stated (28:26): "God made decrees [rules] for the rain. And He set a way for the lightning of the thunder:" Centuries later, scientists began to discern the "rules for the rain" that Job talked about. Rainfall is part of a process called the water cycle. Here’s how the cycle works. The sun evaporates water from the ocean. That water vapor rises and becomes clouds. This water in the clouds falls back to earth as rain, collects in streams and rivers and makes its way back to the ocean. That process repeats itself again and again.

About 300 years ago, Galileo discovered this cycle. But amazingly the Scriptures described this cycle centuries before. The prophet Amos (9:6) wrote that God "calls for the water of the sea. He pours them out on the land." How did Amos know this? He wrote as he was moved by the Spirit of God.

Actually, scientists are just beginning to fully understand God’s "decrees or rules for the rain." Since 68 BC it was thought that somehow thunder triggered the rainfall. Now scientists are beginning to realize that as stated in Job 28:26, it is lightning that triggers the rain to fall. Job knew this 3,000 years ago. Certainly his writings were inspired of God (2 Peter 1:21).

Pleiades, Orion and Arcturus

Remember the story of Job? Job was extremely wealthy — enjoying a wonderful family. Then tragedy struck. He lost his wealth. His children were killed and his wife deserted him. Then Job lay in excruciating pain, covered with sores from head to toe. All this was too much for Job. He accused the Lord of being unjust. God didn’t answer Job’s accusation directly. He merely raised questions concerning the wonders of His creation. Three of these questions found in Job 38:31, 32, illustrate the dynamic logic conveyed in God’s questions.

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

"Canst thou . . . loose the bands of Orion?" Garrett P. Serviss, the noted astronomer, wrote about the bands of Orion12 in his book CURIOSITIES OF THE SKY.

At the present time this band consists of an almost perfect straight line, a row of second-magnitude stars about equally spaced and of the most striking beauty. In the course of time, however, the two right-hand stars, Mintaka and Alnilam, will approach each other and form a naked-eye double; but the third, Alnitak, will drift away eastward so that the band will no longer exist.

In other words, one star is traveling in a certain direction at a certain speed, a second one is traveling in a different direction at a second speed, and the third one is going in a third direction and at a still different speed. Actually every star in Orion is traveling its own course, independent of all the others. Thus, these stars that we see forming one of the bands of Orion are like three ships out on the high seas that happen to be in line at the present moment, but in the future will be separated by thousands of miles of ocean. In fact, all these stars that at the present time constitute the constellation of Orion are bound for different ports, and all are journeying to different corners of the universe, so that the bands are being dissolved.

THE PLEIADES

"Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades . . . ?" Notice the amazing astronomical contrast with the Pleiades. The seven stars of the Pleiades are in reality a grouping of 250 suns. Photographs now reveal that 250 blazing suns in this group are all traveling together in one common direction. Concerning this cluster, Isabel Lewis of the United States Naval Observatory tells us: 13

Astronomers have identified 250 stars as actual members of this group, all sharing in a common motion and drifting through space in the same direction.

Elsewhere Lewis speaks of them as "journeying onward together through the immensity of space."

From Lick Observatory came this statement of Dr. Robert J. Trumpler:14

Over 25,000 individual measures of the Pleiades stars are now available, and their study led to the important discovery that the whole cluster is moving in a southeasterly direction. The Pleiades stars may thus be compared to a swarm of birds, flying together to a distant goal. This leaves no doubt that the Pleiades are not a temporary or accidental agglomeration of stars, but a system in which the stars are bound together by a close kinship.

Dr. Trumpler said that all this led to an important discovery. Without any reference whatsoever to the Book of Job, he announced to the world that these discoveries prove that the stars in the Pleiades are all bound together and are flying together like a flock of birds as they journey to their distant goal. That is exactly what God said. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" In other words, Canst thou keep them bound together so that they remain as a family of suns?

INCREDIBLE! God's laws of cosmology are loosing or dissolving the constellation Orion. Sometime in the far distant future, Orion will be no more. Conversely, wonder of wonders — every last one of the 250 blazing suns in the Pleiades are ordained of God to orbit together in their symmetrical beauty throughout eternity.

ARCTURUS

"Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?"Garrett P. Serviss wrote:15

Arcturus, one of the greatest suns in the universe, is a runaway whose speed of flight is 257 miles per second. Arcturus, we have every reason to believe, possesses thousands of times the mass of our sun. Think of it! Our sun is traveling only 12 ½ miles a second, but Arcturus is traveling 257 miles a second. Think then of the prodigious momentum this motion implies.

A further observation of Arcturus by Serviss reveals: 16

It could be turned into a new course by a close approach to a great sun, but it could only be stopped by collision head on with a body of enormous mass. Barring such accidents, it must, as far as we can see, keep on until it has traversed our stellar system, whence it may escape and pass out into space beyond to join perhaps one of those other island universes of which we have spoken.

Charles Burckhalter, of the Chabot Observatory, added an interesting note regarding this great sun: 17

This high velocity places Arcturus in that very small class of stars that apparently are a law unto themselves. He is an outsider, a visitor, a stranger within the gates; to speak plainly, Arcturus is a runaway. Newton gives the velocity of a star under control as not more than 25 miles a second, and Arcturus is going 257 miles a second. Therefore, combined attraction of all the stars we know cannot stop him or even turn him in his path.

When Mr. Burckhalter had his attention called to this text in the book of Job, he studied it in the light of modern discovery and made a statement that has attracted worldwide attention:18

The study of the Book of Job and its comparison with the latest scientific discoveries has brought me to the matured conviction that the Bible is an inspired book and was written by the One who made the stars.

The wonders of God’s universe never cease to amaze us. Arcturus and his sons are individual runaway suns that seem to be out of orbit in our galaxy. Traveling at such incredible speeds, why don’t they crash with other suns or planets? Where are they headed? Only God knows. Indeed they are not runaways. They will not crash. Why? God is guiding them.

The Lesson of The Pleiades, Orion, and Arcturus

Few have suffered the multiple tragedies of Job. How could God reach through the enormity of Job’s self-pity? (Job thought God just didn’t care.) In these three questions (Job 38:31, 32) God is in reality saying:

Job, you think I am not concerned about your suffering. Well, let Me ask you these questions. Can you loose the bands of Orion? No, you cannot. But My Divine power will. Some day Orion will no longer exist. Job, can you bind the 250 stars of the Pleiades together in their symmetry of beauty and not have a single one drift off? Only I have this power and wisdom. Can you prevent the runaways — Arcturus and his sons — from colliding as they go dashing out of the Milky Way? No, only My Divine power and wisdom can.

Job, if I am caring for the details of the universe, do you doubt that I not only care for the details of your life, but I have the ability to solve your problems? Trust that there is a good reason I am permitting these tragedies. Remember, Job, I work from the perspective of your eternal welfare.

What an awesome way God chose to tell Job that He was in full control of human affairs, including Job's life!

The Lesson of Job for Us

Some write off the history of Job as Old Testament folklore. Whoever heard of God talking to a man! These are hand-me-down tales! However, the account of Job cannot be gainsaid. Whatever the method of communication used by God, the astonishing facts cannot be refuted. These scientific facts recorded in the book of Job concerning the Pleiades, Orion and Arcturus anticipated scientific discovery by nearly 3,000 years. Scientists only discovered these startling facts in the Twentieth Century, yet they were recorded in the book of Job nearly 3000 years ago. What an awesome confirmation of the Bible! Who can doubt the Bible is the inspired word of God? Yes, the book of Job has a powerful, exclusive lesson for modern man. Twentieth Century science has proven God’s Word, the Bible, is true.

Other Sacred Books and the Physical Sciences

The Hindu scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads, consider that "all the objects and phenomena of nature which man is surrounded, are animate and divine."19 This includes the sun, moon, earth, clouds, rain, rivers, seas and rocks as being alive. Writers of the Buddhist canon also ascribe life to numerous non-living objects— sun, moon, lightning, rainbows, mountains, etc. The Taoist and Confucian writings of China contain similar errors.

The Koran, the scripture of Islam, written 1,500 years after the Hindu scripture, does not contain many of the ancient superstitions. Yet its observations of the universe are seriously flawed. The Koran speaks of seven literal heavens which are solid.20 These heavens contain lamps or stars whose main purpose is to be "darted at the devils."21 Mohammed wrote that "the sun sets in a sea of black mud."22

Which Bible is Inspired by a Living God?

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures made scientific observations that were confirmed centuries later by modern science, while the sacred scripture of other world religions merely reflected the scientific superstitions of their culture. How could the Judeo-Christian Scripture anticipate scientific discovery by 3,000 years? The Bible was written by men who were inspired by the Creator and God of the Universe — the God of science. Only the Bible is the Divine Revelation provided by our infinite Creator to direct us in the path to eternity.

10 Douglas, CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM, pp. 260-271.
11 Williams C.A.S., OUTLINES OF CHINESE SYMBOLISM AND ART MOTIVES, (Dover Publications Inc.).
12 Garrett P. Serviss, CURIOSITIES OF THE SKY.
13 Phillip L. Knox, WONDER WORLDS (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Assoc., 1964) p.61
14 Ibid.
15 Serviss.
16 Ibid.
17 Knox, p. 60.
18 Ibid.
19 MacDonell, A. A., VEDIC MYTHOLOGY, (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974) p. 2.
20 THE KORAN, Trans. George Sale (London: Frederick Warne, 1909) pp. 5, 541.
21 Ibid., p. 567.
22 Ibid., p. 294.

anonymous

Pastor charged - persecution

2010-11-30T11:59:00.003-07:00

The Assize Court of the province of Gilan, in Iran, has officially charged Pastor Youcef Nardarkhani with denying that Mohammed was a prophet. The court stated that this resulted in apostasy because Nardarkhani believes in Jesus and has shared his faith with others, according to The Voice of the Martyrs.

The indictment, which was issued by a public prosecutor in the presence of a jury, stated, “He has frequently denied the prophet hood of the great prophet of Islam and the rule of the sacred religion of Islam. ... He has proven his apostasy by organizing evangelistic meetings and inviting others to Christianity, establishing a house church, baptizing people, expressing his faith to others and denying Islamic values.”

According to court documents, when Pastor Youcef was asked about his faith, he told authorities, “Since I was born in a Muslim family, I was Muslim until I converted to Christianity at the age of 19.” He openly acknowledged accepting Jesus Christ.

The court also stated that the apostasy charge was determined a crime according to Islamic theologians.

Pastor Youcef’s defense attorneys have entered a not guilty plea to the charges, arguing that “since there is no punishment specified in the Islamic judicial system of Iran and other penal laws [on apostasy] ... their client has not committed a crime to deserve a punishment.”

The indictment, however, stated that as an apostate, Pastor Youcef will be executed. His lawyers have 20 days to appeal the indictment. The Voice of the Martyrs encourages you to continue praying for Pastor Youcef and his family. Pray that his appeal will be successful and that he will be released.

To learn more about Pastor Youcef, visit www.prisoneralert.com.

Posted earlier by Stacey L. Harp

God is seeking true worshippers

2010-11-21T15:11:00.003-07:00

The Lord said to Abraham, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land that I will show you…”
We read after a couple of verses that Abraham left, as the Lord had told him.
In Luke 14: 26, we read the words of the Lord Jesus “ If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life – he cannot be a Christian and anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me daily, cannot be a Christian” (paraphrase). Have you obeyed God’s command? Most preachers nowadays on Christian television, and elsewhere, do not teach these commandments. They like to preach a watered-down gospel in an effort to be popular. The bible calls them little antichrists 1 John 4: 2, 3

The bible says that obedience is better than sacrifice, (1 Samuel 15:22) and that there is a blessing when we obey God (Gen. 12:2, 3). Satan and our flesh lie to us, lies like “you can sin as long as you don’t get caught”; “you have to lie, now and then, on this earth”; “you can always confess your sins to God”, “there are no consequences to sin” etc. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death, Rom. 6:23. The Lord Jesus said “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices lying, Rev. 22:14. The bible says in Hebrews 6:4, that it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

The whole bible can be summed up in two commandments, Love God and love your neighbor,
Mathew 22: 37-40. Do you Love God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind? Do you love your neighbor (all human beings in your little world) as yourself?
If you have failed to do so, today can be a NEW beginning. Turn from your sins, and turn to God
(Mark 1: 15). He longs to bless you.

A true worshiper is one who loves God one hundred percent all his life. Most professing Christians never come to this life. One reason for this is that they have never read the bible sitting at the Lord’s feet. Instead, they totally depend on the pastors to teach them.

God will test us many times in our earthly life. He tested Abraham to see if he loved Isaac more than Him. Abraham passed the test. God may not ask us to kill anyone physically, but he wants us to love him more than we love our parents, our brothers and sisters, or anything else in this world, even our own life.
True worship is a willingness to give up our precious possessions to the Lord. It is when we can say with all our heart, “Lord, you are more important to me than anyone, or anything, in Heaven and on earth”. The father is seeking worshippers like these who will worship him in spirit and truth. John 4:24

God blessed Abraham greatly because of his obedience. The Blessing of God is not primarily material prosperity. If it were, then Bill Gates or some sheikh in Dubai should be the most spiritual person on earth. The blessings of God are primarily spiritual, a greater likeness to the life of Jesus. May the Lord help us to fulfill his plans for our life.

I surrender all

2010-11-15T21:44:00.005-07:00

Here's a hymn that has been a huge blessing.
keep looking to Jesus. He is the best!!!

Any of you who does not give up everything he has
cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:33

***

All to Jesus, I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.

Refrain

I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my blessèd Savior,
I surrender all.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
Take me, Jesus, take me now.

Refrain

All to Jesus, I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.

Refrain

All to Jesus, I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;
Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me.

Refrain

All to Jesus I surrender;
Now I feel the sacred flame.
O the joy of full salvation!
Glory, glory, to His Name!

Refrain

words: Judson W. Van DeVenter
music: Winfield S. Weeden

He Giveth More Grace

2010-10-22T15:44:00.002-06:00

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving is only begun.

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision,
Our God ever yearns His resources to share;
Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing;
The Father both thee and thy load will upbear.

His love has no limit; His grace has no measure.
His pow'r has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

Annie Johnson Flint

2Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Problems

2010-08-25T12:01:00.001-06:00

Problems
are opportunities
to come

closer

to God.

The reward

2010-08-19T12:04:00.003-06:00

the reward of
humility
and the fear of the LORD
Are riches
honor and life.

Prov. 22:4

For Christ

2010-08-06T11:59:00.001-06:00

"Only one life. 'twill soon be past ONLY What's done
FOR CHRIST WILL LAST."

True Religion IS Not Feeling but Willing

2010-08-05T12:55:00.003-06:00

ONE OF THE PUZZLING QUESTIONS likely to turn up sooner or later to vex the seeking Christian is how he can fulfill the scriptural command to love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself.

The earnest Christian, as he meditates on his sacred obligation to love God and mankind, may experience a sense of frustration gendered by the knowledge that he just cannot seem to work up any emotional thrill over his Lord or his brothers. He wants to, but he cannot. The delightful wells of feeling simply will not flow.

Many honest persons have become discouraged by the absence of religious emotion and concluded that they are not really Christian after all. They conclude that they must have missed the way somewhere back there and their religion is little more than an empty profession. So for a while they belabor themselves for their coldness and finally settle into a state of dull discouragement, hardly knowing what to think. They do believe in God; they do indeed trust Christ as their Saviour, but the love they hoped to feel consistently eludes them. What is the trouble?

The problem is not a light one. A real difficulty is involved, one which may be stated in the form of a question: How can I love by commandment? Of all the emotions of which the soul is capable, love is by far the freest, the most unreasoning, the one least likely to spring up at the call of duty or obligation, and surely the one that will not come at the command of another. No law has ever been passed that can compel one moral being to love another, for by the very nature of it love must be voluntary. No one can be coerced or frightened into loving anyone. Love just does not come that way. So what are we to do with our Lord's command to love God and our neighbor?

To find our way out of the shadows and into the cheerful sunlight we need only to know that there are two kinds of love: the love of feeling and the love of willing. The one lies in the emotions, the other in the will. Over the one we may have little control. It comes and goes, rises and falls, flares up and disappears as it chooses, and changes from hot to warm to cool and back to warm again very much as does the weather. Such love was not in the mind of Christ when He told His people to love God and each other. As well command a butterfly to light on our shoulder as to attempt to command this whimsical kind of affection to visit our hearts.

The love the Bible enjoins is not the love of feeling; it is the love of willing, the willed tendency of the heart. (For these two happy phrases I am indebted to another, a master of the inner life whose pen was only a short time ago stilled by death.)

God never intended that such a being as man should be the plaything of his feelings. The emotional life is a proper and noble part of the total personality, but it is, by its very nature, of secondary importance. Religion lies in the will, and so does righteousness. The only good that God recognizes is a willed good; the only valid holiness is a willed holiness.

It should be a cheering thought that before God every man is what he wills to be. The first requirement in conversion is a rectified will. "If any man will," says our Lord, and leaves it there. To meet the requirements of love toward God the soul need but will to love and the miracle begins to blossom like the budding of Aaron's rod.

The will is the automatic pilot that keeps the soul on course. "Flying is easy," said a friend who flies his own plane. "Just take her up, point her in the direction you want her to go and set the pilot. After that she'll fly herself." While we must not press the figure too far, it is yet blessedly true that the will, not the feelings, determines moral direction.

The root of all evil in human nature is the corruption of the will. The thoughts and intents of the heart are wrong and as a consequence the whole life is wrong. Repentance is primarily a change of moral purpose, a sudden and often violent reversal of the soul's direction. The prodigal son took his first step upward from the pigsty when he said, "I will arise and go to my father." As he had once willed to leave his father's house, now he willed to return. His subsequent action proved his expressed purpose to be sincere. He did return.

Someone may infer from the above that we are ruling out the joy of the Lord as a valid part of the Christian life. While no one who reads these columns regularly would be likely to draw such an erroneous conclusion, a chance reader might be led astray; a further word of explanation is therefore indicated:

To love God with all our heart we must first of all will to do so. We should repent our lack of love and determine from this moment on to make God the object of our devotion. We should set our affections on things above and aim our hearts toward Christ and heavenly things. We should read the Scriptures devotionally every day and prayerfully obey them, always firmly willing to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourself.

If we do these things we may be sure that we shall experience a wonderful change in our whole inward life. We shall soon find to our great delight that our feelings are becoming less erratic and are beginning to move in the direction of the "willed tendency of the heart." Our emotions will become disciplined and directed. We shall begin to taste the "piercing sweetness" of the love of Christ. Our religious affection will begin to mount evenly on steady wings instead of flitting about idly without purpose or intelligent direction. The whole life, like a delicate instrument, will be tuned to sing the praises of Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood.

But first of all we must will, for the will is master of the heart.

A.W. Tozer

All things

2010-07-14T16:57:00.003-06:00

All things
have been
created by Him
and
For Him.

In view
of that
we are
obligated to
honor every
creation.

Col. 1:16

Facing the Infinite God

2010-06-28T18:23:00.002-06:00

Psalm 147:5 "Great is our Lord ..."

I want to do a lot of defining as I go along and say simply, as if you didn't know--I know most of you, or all of you do, unless there are some children--that finite means limited: the thing has a limit to it. So long, so heavy, so old or so something... infinite means that it doesn't have any limits; that there isn't any limit to it. So that infinitude just means a condition of having no limit. So, once more, a big word, when it is reduced down, is found out to be not such a big word after all.

So, I am to talk about the infinitude of God and this, above all the messages that I have brought to you ever, this, will make the greatest demand upon your intelligence and upon your imagination and your powers of reason. The reason that this is so is, that we are going to try to conceive of a mode of being with which we are completely unfamiliar; not merely somewhat unfamiliar, but completely unfamiliar.

God dwells in a mode of being totally beyond us and wholly above us and infinately removed from us yet when we think about God we are trying to think about someone unlike anything we know. God says, Who am I like? or to whom will you compare me? The answer being, nobody; nobody's like God, nothing's like God. God is like Himself.

We dwell in matter and space and time and we are creatures. God is not material; he doesn't dwell in matter. And he isn't spacial; He doesn't dwell in space. And he isn't temporal; he doesn't dwell in time. And he isn't a creature; God is a Creator, not a creature. God was before any creature was and as I have said before, nothing adds anything to God and nothing can take anything away from him.

This poetic notion that God created the world as a theatre where He could display His glory and all that may have something in it, but creation didn't add anything to God and I say it can't take anything away from Him. So we have to try to receive into our mind something wholly different from anything we are familiar with and something wholly beyond anything we are familiar with. You have to get the idea of limitlessness into your head and that is a pretty tough one for us dwellers in time and space. Now one thing you have got to keep in mind is, that anything I say about God this morning isn't God.

You see, friends, theology is what we can learn about God but knowing God is quite something else altogether. Now, anything that I'll say this morning, any intelligent sinner can understand and then go to hell. But eternal life is knowing God and not knowing about God. The difference between a theologian and a saint is that the saint knows God and the theologian knows about God. There is a difference you see, my brother, and theology is what can be known about God--what our little heads can lay hold of--and you don't have to be a Christian to know theology; chances are you would be a Christian or you won't think it interesting enough to monkey with it. But if you're studying doctrine, you can teach doctrine, and study doctrine and not be a Christian. And I have no doubt that many Bible teachers aren't truly Christians; they only know about God, they are specialists in the Book of Romains and Ephesians and Hebrews but they don't know the God of Romains nor Ephesians nor Hebrews. And you can go to Bible conferences and you can hear theology--or doctrine as we like to call it--you can hear doctrine, and you can understand the doctrine, and yet not know God at all.

"This is eternal life that they might know (God) Thee", and "know" there means experience. There is a difference between knowing and experiencing. I know about Eisenhower but I have never experienced Eisenhower. I have never see him, I have never shaken hands with him. I have never heard his voice, except over the radio; I have never experienced Eisenhower, and yet I know about Eisenhower. Anything that I can or shall say about God this morning any sinner can get it, if he's intelligent, and yet go to hell in the end. So don't get puffed up if you happen to feel, well, you understand about God's infinitude. That doesn't mean anything to you, unless you have been born of the Spirit and washed in the blood, because over here in the book of First Corinthians we read this: "It is written, Eye hath not seen, nor eye heard, neither has it enter into the heart of man the thing which God hath prepared for him that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God."

You can know about God without the Spirit, but you'll never know God except by the Spirit. You see, we intuit God. Now 'intuit' is another word people might run away from but it's not so difficult. Intuition is how you know you're alive. How do you know you're alive? You get up in the morning and say to yourself, Now I wonder if I am alive this morning? Then you pinch yourself and say, Well, I have feeling, then you say, Well, I am hungry; I must be alive! You don't reason you're alive: you know you're alive by intuition.

The bird, the little baby, knows it's alive: it's intuition. It's what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him! The spirit of a man is that in a man which knows he's alive. And he doesn't have to have any reason about it: he knows. So what is it that knows God but the spirit of God? I can't know you're alive except by reason. I look down here and I see my brother, and I say to myself, Well, there he sits. He has got a plaid shirt on. He is sitting there humped over and he's alive. Alright, I know he is alive. He looks alive. I reason that he is alive and he has never reasoned about it at all! You don't have to reason to know you are alive: you'll know it by an instinct, intuition, we call it.

Now, the Holy Ghost knows himself with a divine intuition and nobody can know God except those who have the Spirit of God which gives to us that divine intuition so that we know God not by reasoning about Him but we know Him instinctively and intuitively. That's why you can take some little old lady that never got through third grade and only reads by moving her lips and reading out loud and yet she can stand up and praise God at the top of her voice! And you can argue her out of it, you can make fun of her, you can tell her she's ignorant, you can tell her there is no God, you can tell her the gospel is a figment of human imagination. You can argue her down, and when you are finished she will look puzzled, but she's just as likely to just keep on singing because her knowledge of God is an intuitive knowledge! She didn't get it through reason so you can't reason it out of her.

Anything you reason into a mans head, a better reasoner can reason out of his head. That's is why I'm worried when we have an altar-call and people come to the altar and the preacher gets down there with a New Testament with red marks on it and he begins to reason a man into the Kingdom. And anything you can reason into a man, a better reasoner can reason it out of him. But if he meets God and knows God by the Holy Ghost he is not reasoned into the Kingdom, he is born into the kingdom and since he wasn't reasoned in, he can't be reasoned out.

Now that was wasn't at all part of it but I thought I'd say those things before I went any further. God is infinite and we know this from the Scripture. It is one thing God has revealed about Himself by reason and by revelation and, you know, God knows no limit and no bounds. That is what we are trying to say this morning: that whatever God is, he is without limits, and all that God is, He is. And all He ever was or will be and all that He ever is, or will be, He is, without limits.

Have you ever thought that because we have to think with our minds and because our little heads are finite and God is infinite therefore we have to think backwards about God when we reason about God. Now, when you get down on your knees to pray you don't reason, you worship and that is something else. But when you are trying to think about God, you have to think in negatives. The old mystic theologians said that the only way you could ever think about God right was to think negatively about God and you will find that in the Scriptures themselves, as well as in theology.

For instance, self-existence; what is self-existence? It means that God has no origin. What is self-sufficiency ? It means that God has no support. What is God's eternity? It means that God had no beginning and God can have no ending. Our friend down in New York to the contrary notwithstanding, that is negative reasoning. We reason to God's eternity by saying that God had no origin. We reason to his self-sufficiency by saying that He has no one to hold Him up. We reason to God's eternity by saying that God had no beginning. We reason to his immutability by saying that God cannot change. "I, the Lord change not." We reason to his infinitude by saying that he has no limitations. We reason to his omniscience by saying that God cannot learn. Now that would shock some people to say that God can't learn. You can only learn when you are ignorant. That is, if there is one thing in the world you don't know, you're still ignorant. And everybody's ignorant, only, as one fellow said, they're ignorant on different subjects! Everybody's ignorant and everybody can learn. You can learn, but God can't learn because God already knows instantly and perfectly everything that can be known.

So if you have been in the habit of giving God a lecture and briefing Him every morning on what is going on you may as well stop, because you can't tell God anything He doesn't already know because God knows everything that can be known or that is knowable from eternity past to eternity to come. So don't bother God by telling Him an awful lot of things; spend more time worshipping and you'd be nearer to God.

We go to God with our grocery list. I have a book of requests here, so I believe in requests, I write my requests down and I always keep them with me here, I have got my little book here, I have written in my little 10-cent-store book the things I want God to do the major things, you know, and then I check them God answers prayer. I've got a few unanswered prayers but the most of them are answered. And I believe in that, but I don't think we should come to God like to a general store every morning with a list and tell God what we want, and then the next morning appear with another list thanking Him for the list He answered before. That's pretty childish, and cheap, and it's a pretty low way to worship God. There ought to be time when we go into the presence of God with no requests on our heart. Just go to tell God how lovely He is, just to tell God how wonderful He is. And if we don't think he is wonderful, then we don't know him the way we ought to!

Well, that God is infinite, means that God knows no limit and no bounds and here we have got to start eliminating all popular usage. When we talk about unlimited wealth that is perfectly silly, because there is no such thing as and unlimited wealth. Rockefeller didn't have unlimited wealth; he just had a huge amount of it. People looked at it and said, Why it has no limit! But that is silly; it does have a limit. And we say boundless, and we talk about the 'boundless deep' and the poets talk about the tide and said 'that which grew from out the boundless deep turns again home' but the deep isn't boundless. The scientists know how many gallons of water there are in the ocean and they know how much the earth weighs, so that 'boundless' is a word you can't use down here because everything does have a bound.

And then, the word 'infinite'. You talk about an author or a musician taking 'infinite pains' with her music, but she doesn't take infinite pains; she just takes a lot of pains. And energy is not 'boundless'; there is just a lot of it. If you get hit by a few hundred thousand volts of electricity your friends standing around will say, There was boundless power in that lighting stroke!, but it wasn't boundless; it can be weighed, it can be measured, scientist can tell you how much it was. So the words 'infinite' or 'boundless' or 'limitless' or 'measureless' belong to God and nobody else ever should use them. If they use them, they ought to know they don't mean what they're saying.

There is only one who's measureless and that is God: you can't measure God. Some of you sisters who have been working too hard at the table are a pretty good size but you can weigh yourself at least! Some of you tall fellows are awfully tall! I remember one time I was at St Paul's, Minnesota, and I was staying over at Minneapolis. I got in the elevator one night coming down and all I could see was hip pockets and I said: Bless my heart, what's this! And I began to look up for their heads, and there they were: the Indianapolis basketball team there to play Minneapolis' basketball team (incidentally, that night Minneapolis tucked them into their pocket, I remember). But I thought, what is this? Here were these fellows, you know, right up there, and I was a little boy! I am about 5 foot 10, you know, but I was a little boy! They were tall, but they weren't limitless; they could be measured. You didn't think so, standing beside them, but actually you could measure them; they had a limit. They went up there a long way, but they did finally stop. Now, measurement, you see, is a way we have of giving an account of ourselves and it's a way created things have of giving an account of themselves it describes limitations and imperfections. But God never gives an account of Himself anyhow and since God isn't matter, you can't weigh Him and since He isn't space you can't measure Him and since God isn't energy you have no way of computing Him.

We can only describe the contingent and the relative but God, being absolute and self-existent, there is no way of measuring God. So there is no use about talking about God as big. Big is a creature word, you know. And it is a relative word, and if a boy catches a fish as long as your fountain pen it's a big fish to him, and if his father catches one a foot long that is a big fish to him! But the men who catch them in the ocean catch them ten feet long and that is a big fish to them! And that whale that swallowed Jonah was a big fish to Jonah ... and everything is relative. A boat ten feet long is a big boat to some people, but the Queen Mary could tuck that under her finger nail! 'Big' is a word that we use when we are talking about degrees of things but since God doesn't dwell in degrees He's absolute.

Are you afraid of that word absolute? Some people go to college just enough to be ignorant. I have a daughter-in-law like that. She has got an IQ of 148--which is just pushing on genius--and she is the most perfect example of an ignorant person, who knew more before she went to college then she did when she came out! Just ignorant, you know. One of my sons went to university and came out of university and when he was through he walked around and said, Dad is an absolutist, Dad is an absolutist! Well, I didn't shrink and run and hide in the closet and say, Please don't call me an absolutist. Of course I am an absolutist! I believe that God is absolute and that God doesn't dwell in degrees and that you can't measure God nor weigh God. God is absolutely God, and nothing else.

All light came from absolute light and all power came from absolute power and all intelligence came from absolute intelligence and all ideas came from absolute ideas. So that I am an absolutist. No, don't worry me! Because I am an absolutist. I believe that God the Father Almighty is absolutely what He is.

But we use the word absolutely so foolishly. We say, 'She's absolutely beautiful.' No she isn't, she's just pretty! But she certainly isn't absolute, because there was a time she didn't look like that and there will be a time she doesn't look like that. And anything that once wasn't and later won't be isn't absolute: it's just relative. And some of you dear ladies that imagine that you're good-looking are fairly good-looking. I haven't seen any stunning beauties on the ground but you all look nice. But, listen sister, listen sister, you're not absolutely, your not absolutely beautiful, you're just beautiful. And a man thinks he is absolutely strong. Nothing is absolutely: only God . Never use such a word about anything but God! Because absolute means that it is not a part of anything, that it is not a component, it is that, and there is no way of describing it, and that's God.

Oh! Brother, I have a good time with God; I do! I don't shout around like my old friend over here. I like to hear him , I admit it and I enjoy that. One of my joys of going to camp meetings is to hear him because he means it! If he didn't mean it, I'd be the first one to go lead him aside under a tree and give him a talking to, but he means it. But I am not built like that. I can sit utterly unruffled and having things break around me that would excite some people to death but I am not excitable--very. But I get wonderfully excited about God; wonderfully excited over God! And you get before the great God who made heaven and earth and all the things that are therein--why that excites my heart!

Now, we measure things, I am trying to say. Weight, is how we account for the gravitational pull, and distance is how we account for removal in space, and length is how we account for extension in space, and there are other ways; liquid is a quart or a gallon, or whatever it is. My good friend, who is now in the Baleine Valley is a missionary. And he was a city-raised boy and he married a country girl. And he was giving an illustration one day in his preaching as a young preacher. He said something about if a cow could give 40 quarts of milk, she'd be doing pretty well and his wife said: "Brother, you can say that again!" She was from the country and she knew cows but he didn't!

And while I am at it, while I am at it, since I am making a terrific demand on your head this morning, I may as well tell you this one about my good red-headed friend Ed in the Baleine Valley. He was a city boy but he went down on the farm where he found his wife, and they were studying there and they had an old pig there, an old sow and they expected her to have a litter and he was more or less--like the rest of them, you know--waiting around for the event. Then one day somebody rushed in and said, I think she 's going to have her pigs; she's making her nest. And Ed rushed outside and started looking in the trees!

Well, you see don't you, friends, that there are measures down here. A cow gives so much milk and there is so much water in the spring and so many horsepower in your engine, so many candlepower in your electric light, so far from here to the next town. We weigh and measure things but God is outside all these things and above all that.

Thou art infinite, O God, and none of these words or concepts touch or describe God. They describe the imperfect only, and God is perfect. And thus we don't weight or measure God, he knows no degree. 'One God, one Majesty; there is no God, but thee, unbounded, unextended unity'. And God has no measure and no amount. God is measureless, boundless, and thus infinite.

Now what does all this mean to us, brothers and sisters? Well, that is really what I want to talk about: what does all this mean to us? It means that whatever God is to you, God is to you absolutely and without measure. It means that if God is your father he is not like your earthly father with limits and imperfections. It means that if God is your father he is infinitely your father and he is your father in infinite measure and degree. Although neither measure nor degree apply to God we have to use it or else have a blank space in our heads. And so God is your father: a perfect father. God can do what you can't do.

I think now as I am older that I wasn't a perfect father by a long way to my children because I sometimes used sarcasm on them to get them to obey. Well, that was a great breakdown. And I heard the sermon last night and I sat there thinking that I wasn't so good a father and if I had been like some of you I would have gone to the altar but I have my altar wherever I am. I wasn't a perfect father for a number of reasons; one of them was that I knew they were intelligent little scoundrels so I knew that if I just came head-on there would be just one Tozer bumping another one and that is just like an irresistible force meeting an immutable object. So I would just flank them with a little sarcasm and that wasn't good because I know I hurt them. So I am not a perfect father and I don't suppose there are any perfect fathers here. Brothers and sisters, let me say to you that God is the perfect Father. And God never makes any mistakes.

And I am so glad that God never read any books on what a young father ought to know. And I am glad God never worries about psychology and never hunts up a teacher to teach him how to be a father. No, no, my friends; God is our Father, and he is infinitely our Father and he is perfectly our Father.

And then God has His mercy. Now think about the mercy of God and think that it is infinite. There is no degree to it. Man has mercy. Out in the state of Illinois, this man Leopold who with Loeb in 1926 I think it was, killed young Bobby Frank and was sentenced to 199 years and Loeb died in prison and Leopold learned 26 languages and became a recognized scientist, yet he has been 33 years in that prison and he has tried to get out on parole a number of times and this last week he came up for Executive Clemency and I left Chicago before it was settled but I think Leopold was to receive pardon. He is sick; he won't live very long although he is only 52 years of age but he is a scientist and he said he wants to spend the rest of his life helping people, so he wants to go to a hospital and be a helper there until he dies. That's very fine.

But if they pardon him it will be mercy. But mercy wasn't big enough to pardon him to start with. Justice came in and sentenced him to 199 years. What I am trying to say is that man's mercy knows limits but God's mercy knows no limit. So you can go around preaching the mercy of God without limits. There is no limit in the mercy of God because you can't find the boundaries of God's limits. Everything that God is, he is without limit. So that if you could think of God's mercy as a sea you could swim in it for ten million years and never come to the shore because if doesn't have a shore! So that if you could think of God's mercy as being like the atmosphere you could get into an airplane traveling at the speed of light and you could go on for ever and still never find the limits of God's mercy!

Now, the reason this interests me is that I never want a little bit of something; I either want enough, or you can have it. I couldn't worship a God that was little and that had to worry about His mercy. If God had to call all the archangels around and say: "I wonder if we will have enough mercy for that. We are getting a little low on it. It hasn't rained for sometime and I was just wonder if we got have enough mercy." Brother, God has all the mercy there is and that is all you need. If God willed to do it, God has enough mercy to pardon all the demons and all pardon angels and the devil himself and everybody in hell. God doesn't will to do it; so I don't believe that there will be a universal redemption of angels and devils and sinners, but I say there is mercy enough in God to have mercy upon all beings. And if there were one million times ten millions more sinners than there are it wouldn't put a strain on God's mercy because His mercy is infinite and you can't strain infinitude.

And, then think of the love of God :

This is the Lord we adore.
Our faithful unchangeable friend
Whose love is as great as his power
And neither know limit nor end

So think of God's love. Now, a mother's love is usually held up as being the most beautiful thing in the world and as near to limitless as you can get. But a mother can be outraged to a point where her love will die, or a mother can die and her love will die with her. But God can't die and there isn't any way of God ceasing to love. See, God doesn't love you because you are lovable, he loves you because he is love. For that reason God loves his world, and he loves his universe and it never changes any. Some people think that when Christ died on the cross God loved us more then he had before. No brother, Jesus dying didn't increase the love of God any, because you can't increase the love of God. How can you increase that which is limitless and boundless? Where would get any love to add to the love of God? There isn't any way of increasing God's love. So God loves you with all the love there is in the universe. That ought to make you feel good! I don't know whether it does or not, but it should. "Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love." That is what the scripture says; 'an everlasting love'. And so the love of God is everlasting. I think of this song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the sky of parchment made
Were every stock on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll
Contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky

Whoever wrote that had the idea, the love of God is absolutely infinite and there isn't any place to find the end of it so that if you live in the eternity to come as you will and exist forever for you came into the world a little protesting, squawking, sticky infant you came into the world with eternity in your heart, brother. A little rabbit is born to live three years, then die. I watched a little bird hop around looking out my window and I thought "Poor little guy! You will only be here a while and then you will go back to the dust from which you came." But when you were born something eternal was born. You see, God is eternal both directions. The word eternal means from the vanishing point to the vanishing point. 'Out of mind' to 'out of mind' that is what eternal means in Hebrew. From 'out of mind' to 'out of mind' in both directions. So you are not eternal backwards. There was a time when you weren't and God spoke and you were. But you are eternal in this direction that out of mind to the vanishing point you will not cease to be. So though you have eternity in your heart and will never cease to be you can never out live the love of God and you can never go beyond the love of God.

"Because I, the Lord, fill all things and the heaven and heavens can not contain me" and God being love eternity and all space is not only filled with the love of God but overflowing with the love of God! You never can overdo the love of God although you can preach so much about the love of God that people forget he is a God of justice and do harm to the church. Don't forget that.

God's grace is infinite. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. I like that passage and I want to tell you one more little story and then quit.

This little story happened in Omaha, Nebraska. I heard a man preach, and to save my life I don't know what he said. That is the blessed thing about preaching: you can hear a man preaching and get blessed and don't remember what he said. But just the fact he was talking about God gave you a big lift, and sent you out feeling better determined to be a better Christian, even if you didn't remember what he said. And most of what we say isn't worth it. But I don't remember what this man said and he was one of America's great preachers. But I went down to my hotel room and I got down on my knees and I was praying. I was influenced by the sermon but not instructed by it. And there I was, on my knees, and there a sense of my own sinfulness came over me and the knowledge of the sins I had committed, and the wrongs I had done, and all the rest and even though I had been saved for many years and preaching for many years, I got under conviction like a sinner before the altar. And there before the great God I was pouring out my iniquities and my awfulness to God and then when I was through, God didn't answer me exactly but he let me begin to reason.

And I thought to myself, Now, wait here a minute: You're a sinner--or you were--but you're a finite sinner. Therefore if every corpuscle in your body was a sin and if every nerve in your body was a sin and every hair on your head was sin, and you had sin like a mountain or like an ocean, there would still be a limit; someone could count it. Somebody could put the boundary around it. Some surveyor could come and say: I am counting Tozer's sins. It would take him months to do it, but finally he would get around the outside of it. Some geologist could come and say: I am measuring Tozer's sins and he could measure them out and it could be a long measure but he could finally get to the top because I am finite and a limited man and I can only sin finitely.

Therefore, all my sins, even though they are worse than I think they are, have a limit to them somewhere. But Jesus, when he died on the cross, died to make an infinite atonement without any limit at all! Where sin abounded grace did much more abound. So I knelt there thinking before God and I said, Well God, I am not going to let this bother me any more, because even if every cell in my body were a sin it still can be counted but who can count the infinite infinite boundless worth of the blood of the Lamb. And something whispered to my heart that one drop of the blood of Jesus Christ--being God--one drop of the blood of Jesus is capable of making atonement for all of Adam's race, from Adam and Eve down to the newest baby born one minute ago.

So that is why I walk around relaxed and kind of loose. Because God's mercy is big enough for me. God's grace is big enough for me. You can go anywhere. Here is a brother over here who is a guard over in a prison. Why, that man can go to the worst triple murderer and say to him, The love of God can take you in if you let him! God's love is big enough and God's atonement is big enough and the mercy of God is great enough because there is no limit to it. You only killed three people but if you had murdered the whole humain race it would have had a limit but the atonement in Jesus' blood has no limit. Limitless, boundless, grace. So that is why I like to sing: "Marvellous grace of our loving Lord".

That is a reasonably good song, brother. They don't make many good ones nowadays but that comes close to being a good one. And that is pretty good. "Infinite, matchless, marvellous, grace, grace that is greater then all our sin". Well that is the end of the sermon and now just a word or two to say this to you: Pray every day for a good vision of God. Pray every day God will make you think big about Him. An unworthy, low concept of God seems to me is the greatest weakness of the modern church. God is the Man upstairs he is somebody. He's Him, He's He. He is that strange being yonder but He is just a big man up there just a greatly enlarged movie star. Well, the result of all that is that our Christianity is dragging in the gutter and I would rather drag the American flag in the gutter then to drag Christianity in the gutter--wouldn't you? I never have, and in the army I use to see them put the flag up and if it started to touch the ground some soldier would dive to get it. They didn't want that noble flag to be in the dirt. So let us take our thoughts of God our concept of God and think of it infinitely beyond the flag of our country. Never let it drag in the dust. Never think a low thought about God. Never compare God to people. Never compare God even to archangels; God our heavenly father's above it all.

And now, the most wonderful thing of all is that a God like that, a God before whom angels veil their faces, a God whose presence is heaven and whose absence is hell, that that, infinite, absolute, boundless, omnipotent, eternal omniscience God should come down and walk around in the form of a baby. And say : "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laded and I will give you rest". And, that that God should say, When you pray, say: "Our father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name." So when you pray to your father, remember who your father is and you'll be a better son.

A. W. Tozer

God's love~

2010-06-01T13:24:00.003-06:00

This
is a message on God's love
as seen
in Ps. 23.
Pl. click on the right arrow (play) button.

`~~~**Happy Mother's day!!*

2010-05-10T01:55:00.012-06:00

Following Christ

2010-04-27T16:49:00.004-06:00

This
is a message
about following Jesus!

Directions to his house

2010-04-01T19:18:00.003-07:00

Make a Right onto "Turn from sin Blvd."

Keep straight and go through the Green Light, which is Jesus Christ.

From there, you must turn onto the "Bridge of Faith," which is over troubled
water.

When you get off the bridge, make a Right turn and Keep Straight.

You are on the "King's Highway" - Heaven-bound.

Keep going for three miles: One for the Father, One for the Son, and One for
the Holy Ghost.

Then exit off onto "Grace Blvd."

From there, make a Right turn on "Gospel Lane."

Keep Straight and then make another Right on "Prayer Blvd."

As you go on your way, Yield Not to the traffic on "Temptation Ave."

Also, avoid SIN STREET because it is a DEAD END.

Pass up "Envy Drive," and "Have Avenue."

Also, pass "Hypocrisy Street," "Gossiping Lane" and "Backbiting Blvd."

But you have to go down "Long-suffering Lane", "Persecution Blvd.," and
"Trials and Tribulations Ave."

But that's all right, because VICTORY Blvd. is straight ahead!

God Bless

-- Author Unknown

Jesus loves you

2010-03-11T13:58:00.001-07:00

Have faith in God! Mark 11

the story of reading the bible

2010-01-18T05:50:00.002-07:00

The story is told of an old man who lived on a farm in the mountains of Kentucky with his young grandson. Each morning, Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading from his old worn-out Bible.

His grandson who wanted to be just like him tried to imitate him in any way he could.

One day the grandson asked, "Papa, I try to read the Bible just like you but I don't understand it, and what I do understand I forget as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the Bible do?"

The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and said, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring back a basket of water."

The boy did as he was told, even though all the water leaked out before he could get back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, "You will have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again.

This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned home. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was "impossible to carry water in a basket," and he went to get a bucket instead. The old man said, "I don't want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You can do this. You're just not trying hard enough," and he went out the door to watch the boy try again. At this point, the boy knew it was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran as fast as he could, the water would leak out before he got far at all.

The boy scooped the water and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty. Out of breath, he said, "See Papa, it's useless!"

"So you think it is useless?" The old man said, "Look at the basket."

The boy looked at the basket and for the first time he realized that the basket looked different. Instead of a dirty old coal basket, it was clean.

"Son, that's what happens when you read the Bible. You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, it will change you from the inside out. That is the work of God in our lives. To change us
From the inside out and to slowly transform us into the image of His son."

Take time to read a portion of God's word each day, and remind a
Friend by sharing this story.

"Live Simply, Love Generously, Care Deeply, Speak Kindly, Leave The Rest To God"

God is good!

2009-11-30T19:21:00.001-07:00

Make Jesus the Lord of your entire life~
He will save you from all your sins. Mathew 1: 21

Godliness

2009-11-18T00:15:00.001-07:00

Godliness with contentment is great gain! God bless you~
1 Timothy 6:6

quote

2009-05-01T02:55:00.002-06:00

“You have never really lived until you've done something for someone who can never repay you.”

Unknown

arise

2009-04-03T15:25:00.003-07:00

Happy dreams
soaked
in love
pain
caught
in the nets of hope
not to bother
the renewed heart;
a new life now.

The sun breathes
its light on you
arise and shine
from places on high
your light has come.

Shine
for all to see
you the student,

the little child
your teacher be;
learn from it
the ways of life
Happy, you will be
bright your days~

Stan © Copyright 2009

The best gifts this season

2008-12-22T14:14:00.001-07:00

To a Friend Loyalty

To an Enemy Forgiveness

To your Boss Service

To your Child A good example

To your Father Honor

To your Mother Gratitude and Devotion

To your Spouse Love and Faithfulness

To Yourself Respect

To All Men Charity

To God Your Life!!

-- Author Unknown

Jesus is awesome

2008-12-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays everyone

Who's Your Daddy - Ben Hooper story

2008-10-15T03:50:00.001-06:00

A seminary professor was vacationing with his wife in Gatlinburg, TN. One morning, they were eating breakfast at little restaurant, hoping to enjoy a quiet, family meal. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting with the guests. The professor leaned over and whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn't come over here." But sure enough, the man did come over to their table. "Where are you folks from?" he asked in a friendly voice.

"Oklahoma," they answered.

"Great to have you here in Tennessee." the stranger said. "What do you do for a living?"

"I teach at a seminary," he replied.

"Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I've got a really great story for you." And with that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with the couple. The professor groaned and thought to himself, "Great... Just what I need another preacher story!"

The man started, "See that mountain over there pointing out the restaurant window. Not far from the base of that mountain, there was a boy born to an unwed mother. He had a hard time growing up, because every place he went, he was always asked the same question, 'Hey boy, Who's your daddy?' "Whether he was at school, in the grocery store or drug store, people would ask the same question, 'Who's your daddy?'

He would hide at recess and lunch time from other students. He would avoid going in to stores because that question hurt him so bad. "When he was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to his church. He would always go in late and slip out early to avoid hearing the question, 'Who's your
daddy?'. But one day, the new preacher said the benediction so fast he got caught and had to walk out with the crowd.

"Just about the time he got to the back door, the new preacher, not knowing anything about him, put his
hand on his shoulder and asked him, 'Son, who's your daddy?'" The whole church got deathly quiet. He could feel every eye in the church looking at him. Now everyone would finally know the answer to the
question, 'Who's your daddy'. This new preacher, though, sensed the situation around him and using discernment that only the Holy Spirit could give, said the following to that scared little boy

"'Wait a minute!' he said. 'I know who you are. I see the family resemblance now. You are a child of God. With that he patted the boy on his shoulder and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.'

With that, the boy smiled for the first time in a long time and walked out the door a changed person. He was never the same again.

Whenever anybody asked him, 'Who's your Daddy?' he'd just tell them, 'I'm a Child of God'." The distinguished gentleman got up from the table and said, "Isn't that a great story?"

The professor responded that it really was a great story!

As the man turned to leave, he said, "You know, if that new preacher hadn't told me that I was one of God's children, I probably never would have amounted to anything!" And he walked away.

The seminary professor and his wife were stunned. He called the waitress over and asked her, "Do you know who that man was who just left that was sitting at our table?"

The waitress grinned and said, "Of course. Everybody here knows him. That's Ben Hooper. He's the former governor of Tennessee!"

Someone in your life today needs a reminder that they're one of God's children!

you are blessed

2008-10-02T05:43:00.002-06:00

If you woke up this morning
with more health than illness,
you are more blessed than the
million who won't survive the week.

If you have never experienced
the danger of battle,
the loneliness of imprisonment,
the agony of torture or
the pangs of starvation,
you are ahead of 20 million people
around the world.

If you attend a church meeting
without fear of harassment,
arrest, torture, or death,
you are more blessed than almost
three billion people in the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator,
clothes on your back, a roof over
your head and a place to sleep,
you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank,
in your wallet, and spare change
in a dish someplace, you are among
the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still married and alive,
you are very rare,
especially in the United States.

If you hold up your head with a smile
on your face and are truly thankful,
you are blessed because the majority can,
but most do not.

If you can hold someone's hand, hug them
or even touch them on the shoulder,
you are blessed because you can
offer God's healing touch.

If you can read this message,
you are more blessed than over
two billion people in the world
that cannot read anything at all.

You are so blessed in ways
you may never even know.

something to say - Mathew west

2008-09-06T02:49:00.001-06:00

Wake up, 7:32 AM
Can’t believe it’s time to do it over again
Yesterday, it took all that you had
And you’re wonderin’ if you’ll ever get it back
But the whole wide world is waiting for
Waiting for you to step out that door
Come on and let your life be heard today

You got something to say
If you’re livin’, if you’re breathin’
You got something to say
And you know if your heart is beatin’
You got something to say
And no one can say it like you do
God is love and love speaks through
You got it, you got it
You got something to say

Yeah, yeah
Something to say
Yeah, oh

Listen up, I got a question here
Would anybody miss you if you disappeared?
Well your life is the song that you sing
And the whole wide world is listening
Well the answer to the question is
You were created, your life is a gift and
The lights are shining on you today, ‘cause

You got something to say
If you’re livin’, if you’re breathin’
You got something to say
And you know if your heart is beatin’
You got something to say
And no one can say it like you do
God is love and love speaks through
You got it, you got it
You got something to say

Yeah
You got something to say
Come on, come on, yeah

Sing na na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na
Na na na na na, yeah

Listen up, I got a question here
Would anybody miss you if you disappeared?
Well your life is the song that you sing
And the whole wide world is listening

Oh

You got something to say
And no one can say it like you do
God is love and love speaks through
You got it, you got it
You got something to say

Yeah
Something to say
Come on, come on, yeah

And the world is listening now
And the lights are shining down
Shining down on you today, ‘cause
You got something to say

So just say it

Deception and counterfiet revival

2008-08-30T03:29:00.001-06:00

Jesus and the apostles repeatedly warned that the last days
would be characterized by widespread deception and a
multitude of false prophets (Matt.24:3-5,11,24; 1 Tim.4:1) –
and we have seen plenty of them in the last few decades.

Why are millions of Christians deceived by these false
prophets and these counterfeit “revivals”? And why are so
many preachers falling prey to immorality and greed?

Here are what I see to be some of the main causes:

1. Most Christians today are not aware of what the New
Testament teaches, because they have not studied it
carefully; and so they follow the teachings of their leaders
and not the teachings of the New Testament.

2. Miracles (supernatural gifts) have become more important
to them than their character (a supernatural life).

3. Material wealth has become more important to them than
spiritual wealth.

4. They are unable to distinguish between soulish frenzy or
psychological manipulation, and the genuine moving of the
Holy Spirit; the cause again is ignorance of the New
Testament.

5. They are unable to distinguish between psychosomatic
healing (healing that comes by right attitudes of the mind),
and supernatural healing in Jesus' Name.

6. Emotional excitement and strange physical manifestations
have become more important to them than the inward joy of
the Lord.

7. For the leaders, their ministry to people has become more
important than their inner walk with God.

8. The approval of men has become more important to these
leaders than the approval of God.

9. The number of people attending the meetings has become
more important to these leaders than whether those people
are totally committed to Christ.

10. Building their personal kingdoms and their financial
empires has become more important to these leaders than
building a local church and making themselves servants in
that local church (Jeremiah 6:13).

All this is the VERY OPPOSITE of what Jesus taught. The
opposite of Christ is called the "anti-Christ" in the New Testament.
If Christians do not see this clearly, then when
the Antichrist turns up on the world’s stage, with his false
signs and wonders (2 Thess.2:3-10), they too will blindly
accept him. To be led by the Spirit of Christ is to have
the very opposite spirit to that mentioned in the points above.

Here is a paraphrase of Jesus' words in Matthew 7:13-27
(read in the context of Matthew Chapters 5 to 7:

"Both the gate and the way to ETERNAL LIFE are very narrow -
as I have just described (Matt. 5 to 7). But false prophets
will come along and tell you that the gate and way are not
narrow but easy and broad. Beware of them. You will be able
to identify them easily by observing the fruit of their character:
Do they live a life free from anger, free from
lusting after women, free from the love of money and free
from anxiously seeking after material wealth (as worldly
people seek)? Do they preach against these things as I have
done here? (Matt.5:21-32 and 6:24-34). These false prophets
may exercise many supernatural gifts and do miracles and
actually heal people in My Name, but I will still send them
all to hell in the final day, because they did not know Me
(as THE HOLY ONE) and they did not give up sin in their
private lives (Matt.7:21-23). So if you want to build a
church on a rock that will never shake or fall in time or
eternity, be careful to do all that I have just spoken to
you (Matt. 5 to 7) and teach your people to do all that I
have commanded you too. Then I will be with you always and
My authority will always back you (Matt.28:20, 18). But if
you only hear what I say and don't do it, then what you
build may look like a large and impressive church to men,
but it will surely crumble and fall one day (Matt.7:25)."

How then shall we build an unshakeable church in these last days?

1. We must live the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5 to 7) and
preach it constantly.

2. We must live in the new-covenant and not in the old-covenant.
For this, we must know the difference between the
two covenants clearly (2 Cor.3:6). We must also preach the
new covenant.

When preachers fall into serious sin today, they justify
themselves by (and find their comfort in) the examples of
Old Testament saints who also fell into sin. And then they
re-commence their ministry after a period of silence. They
quote the examples of David who committed adultery, and
Elijah who got depressed, and they say "But God still used them"!
But they won't quote the example of Paul who lived in
victory and purity until the end of his life.

What these preachers (and most Christians) have not seen is
that the Old Testament saints are NOT our examples today. We
have been given much more in this age of grace – and "to
whom more is given, more is required" (Luke 12:48). Jesus is
the Mediator of a NEW covenant and HE is our Example and the
Author of our faith today – not David or Elijah. The
distinction between the Old Testament saints (listed in Hebrews 11)
and Jesus, is made very clear in Hebrews 12:1-4.
But very few live in the reality of this. Very few have seen
that "God has provided something BETTER for us" in the new
covenant (Heb.11:40).

Any of us can fall in the way that many preachers have
fallen, if we are not watchful and alert – for Satan is a
cunning enemy. Our safety lies in obeying New Testament
teaching exactly and in submitting to godly leadership.
(And by “godly” leadership, I mean those who do not have even one
of the wrong values listed in the ten points I mentioned earlier).
If we learn from the mistakes of others, we can
avoid making the same mistakes ourselves.

So let us keep our faces in the dust before the Lord at all
times – for it is there that we will receive Divine revelation,
as John did (Rev.1:17). If we humble ourselves,
we will receive grace to be overcomers (1 Pet.5:5). And when
the Holy Spirit shows us the truth in God’s Word and the
truth about ourselves, let us be totally honest and “love
the truth, so as to be saved” from all sin. That way we will
be protected by God Himself from all deception (2 Thess.2:10,11). Amen.

ZP

You saved the day!

2008-07-24T03:31:00.002-06:00

God's kindness

2008-07-14T23:56:00.002-06:00

God's kindness and his love are better than life itself. Psalm 63:3

My God, How Wonderful Thou Are

2008-06-24T22:58:00.002-06:00

My God, how wonderful Thou art
Thy majesty how bright!
How beautiful Thy mercy-seat
In depths of burning light!

How dread are Thine eternal years
O everlasting Lord
By prostrate spirits day and night
Incessantly adored!

How wonderful, how beautiful
The sight of Thee must be
Thine endless wisdom, boundless power
And awesome purity!

O how I fear Thee, living God
With deepest, tenderest fears
And worship Thee with trembling hope
And penitential tears!

Yet I may love Thee too, O Lord
Almighty as Thou art
For Thou hast stooped to ask of me
The love of my poor heart

No earthly father loves like Thee
No mother e'er so mild
Bears and forbears as Thou hast done
With me, Thy sinful child

Father of Jesus, love's reward
What rapture will it be
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie
And gaze, and gaze on Thee

Frederick W. Faber

Give me Jesus~

2008-06-10T02:45:00.002-06:00

Hallellujah Jesus, Monk & Neagle

2008-06-09T01:08:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite Praise songs.

Jesus is Lord

2008-05-24T12:03:00.001-06:00

Jesus is coming soon!

a radical conversion

2008-05-24T02:53:00.001-06:00

Is God your Lawyer?

2008-05-17T13:47:00.003-06:00

Saul was trying to kill David and David's response to him was "God is my Lawyer and defender, and he will rescue me from your power!"

1 Samuel 24: 15

Don't let me miss the glory

2008-04-19T14:08:00.004-06:00

In the view from the mountains
There's a story to be told
In the crashing of the ocean
There's a power that no man will ever hold

All the stars in the Heavens
Decorate Your handiwork
And like a mighty choir
They've come to celebrate Your worth

CHORUS
Don't let me miss the glory
Don't let me miss the grace
All creation is singing
To the honor of Your name

Don't let me miss the wonder
Don't let me miss the grand design
And the lightning and the thunder
Lord open up my eyes
Don't let me miss the glory

VERSE 2
In the cry of a baby
In the laughter of love
In the dance of the faithful
you will find the greatness of our God above

In the prayer of the righteous
In the beauty of Your grace
In a brand new morning's mercy
All your memories of my sin have been erased

Don't let me miss the glory

-Gordon Mote

How many kings

2008-03-26T14:19:00.002-07:00

Follow the star to a place unexpected

Would you believe after all we’ve projected

A child in a manger

Lowly and small, the weakest of all

Unlikeliest hero, wrapped in his mothers shawl

Just a child Is this who we’ve waited for?

Cause how many kings, stepped down from their thrones?

How many lords have abandoned their homes?

How many greats have become the least for me?

How many Gods have poured out their hearts

To romance a world that has torn all apart?

How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Bringing our gifts for the newborn savior

All that we have whether costly or meek

Because we believe

Gold for his honor and frankincense for his pleasure

And myrrh for the cross he’ll suffer

Do you believe, is this who we’ve waited for?

(It’s who we’ve waited for)

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?

How many lords have abandoned their homes?

How many greats have become the least for me?

How many Gods have poured out their hearts

To romance a world that has torn all apart?

How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Only one did that for me

All for me All for you

All for me All for you

Father's love letter

2008-02-25T20:35:00.002-07:00

Pl. pause the audio on your left hand side before you watch the video.

God is our refuge~

2008-02-14T19:04:00.002-07:00

1 GOD IS our Refuge and Strength [mighty and impenetrable to temptation], a very present and well-proved help in trouble.

2Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains be shaken into the midst of the seas,

3Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling and tumult. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

4There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.

5God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God will help her right early [at the dawn of the morning].

6The nations raged, the kingdoms tottered and were moved; He uttered His voice, the earth melted.

7The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our Refuge (our Fortress and High Tower). Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

8Come, behold the works of the Lord, Who has wrought desolations and wonders in the earth.

9He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow into pieces and snaps the spear in two; He burns the chariots in the fire.

10Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth!

11The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our Refuge (our High Tower and Stronghold). Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]! Psalm 46

I surrender all

2008-02-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

ALL TO JESUS I SURRENDER

ALL TO HIM I FREELY GIVE;

I WILL EVER LOVE AND TRUST HIM,

IN HIS PRESENCE DAILY LIVE.

CHORUS:
I SURRENDER ALL,

I SURRENDER ALL;

ALL TO THEE, MY BLESSED SAVIOUR,

I SURRENDER ALL.

ALL TO JESUS, I SURRENDER,

MAKE ME, SAVIOUR, WHOLLY THINE;

LET ME FEEL THY HOLY SPIRIT,

TRULY KNOW THAT THOU ART MINE.

ALL TO JESUS, I SURRENDER,

LORD, I GIVE MYSELF TO THEE;

FILL ME WITH THY LOVE AND POWER,

LET THY BLESSING FALL ON ME.

P.S. If you would like to watch the video, Pl. pause the sonific widget on your left hand side. God bless.

God's bigger than that

2008-01-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

We are soldiers in an army fighting every day

The captain of glory is leading the way

We are headed to a city – He’s taking us on back

No matter what’s before us – God’s bigger than that

CHORUS:

My God is bigger than the mountains or the raging seas

He’s bigger than my worries – He’s bigger than my needs

He is the rock of ages – sweet victory at last

No matter what the problem - God’s bigger than that

V2:

You may face the raging battle of Satan every day

As he constantly reminds you of all your past mistakes

See he’s got his eyes upon you – He’s trying to turn you back

But he knows you know the answer – God’s bigger than that

Tag:

He is bigger than all of my problems – Bigger than all my fears

God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see

Bigger than all of my questions - Bigger than anything

God is bigger than any mountain that I can or cannot see

Chris Binion & Scott Moody

A 12 year old with a brush

2008-01-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

"Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

"Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Mathew 18:3-4

Click here to watch the video.

I can only imagine

2007-12-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

I can only imagine what it will be like, when I walk by Your side... I can only imagine, what my eyes will see, when Your Face is before me! I can only imagine. I can only imagine. Surrounded by Your Glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of You, be still? Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing 'Hallelujah!'? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine! I can only imagine! I can only imagine, when that day comes, when I find myself standing in the Son! I can only imagine, when all I will do, is forever, forever worship You! I can only imagine! I can only imagine! Surrounded by Your Glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of You, be still? Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing 'Hallelujah!'? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine! Yeah! I can only imagine! Surrounded by Your Glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of You, be still? Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing 'Hallelujah!'? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine! Yeah! I can only imagine! I can only imagine! Yeah! I can only imagine!! Only imagine!!! I can only imagine. I can only imagine, when all I do is forever, forever worship You! I can only imagine.

Mercyme

The books of the bible

2007-12-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

Do you need help memorizing the books of the Bible? Here's a great video.

Pray for Christians in North Korea

2007-12-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

In public, there will be no observation of Christmas and citizens will go on with their daily routines as if it were any other day in the year. There will be no string lights on the streets, no wreaths, no Christmas music, and no holiday greetings in public as well as private.

North Korea remains one of the few countries in the world where citizens are not permitted to celebrate Christmas at all.

But Christianity is alive and growing in the oppressive communist state with some estimates putting the underground Christian population at tens of thousands.

Although these believers are not allowed to openly express their joy at Christmas, they will still observe the meaning of the holiday, according to a Christian ministry working with persecuted believers in North Korea.

“But, of course, Christians do reflect on the birth of Jesus Christ,” said Brother Simon, who coordinates the work of Open Doors in North Korea, from a secret location. “Only they can’t just go along to church to sing or listen to a sermon. They can’t even visit one another to read the Bible together. Being a Christian in North Korea is very lonely.”

Simon, whose full name cannot be given for security reasons, explains that believers in North Korea can usually only gather two at a time on a given Sunday. A Christian would sit on a park bench and another Christian would come sit next to him. If no one is around, they may be able to share a Bible verse they know by heart and briefly give a reflection. They also share prayer topics with each other, said Simon.

“Then they leave one another and go and look for Christians in some other part of their town. This continues throughout Sunday,” he said.

A cell group usually has less than 20 Christians who meet and encourage one another this way or meet one-on-one in people’s homes.

In this way, Christmas will also be celebrated.

“Christmas is mainly celebrated in the heart of the Christian,” said Simon. “Only if the whole family has turned to Christ is it possible to have something like a real gathering. For fear of retribution it is necessary to keep your faith hidden from the neighbors.”

But in remote areas, a group of up to 20 people can sometimes meet. In rare instances, some gatherings in the mountains bring together some 60 to 70 North Korean Christians.

North Korea is ranked number one in the annual Open Doors Watch List as the country that has the worst persecution of Christians. If the regime discovers a person is a Christian, the believer can be thrown into a labor camp, tortured, or even publicly executed to dissuade others from following the faith.

It is believed that tens of thousands of Christians are currently suffering in North Korean prison camps, according to Open Doors. The regime is suspected of detaining more political and religious prisoners than any other country in the world.

Instead of a globally recognized religion, citizens of the reclusive country are forced to worship a cult-like version of the trinity consisting of the deceased dictator Kim Il Sung (father), current dictator Kim Jong Il (son) and the Juche ideology.

All religions other than the worship of the North Korean dictators are forbidden. Christianity, in particular, is seen as the greatest threat to the state and to Kim’s power and is harshly punished.

The U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, John V. Hanford III, described North Korea as the “worst violator of religious freedom in the world” during his presentation earlier this year of the 2007 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

By
Michelle vu

Rose of Sharon: An Irish Hymn

2007-12-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

There's a Beautiful Rose ever blooming,
In the Garden of God's Love for me;
It has filled all the world with it's fragrance,
It will last for eter - ernity.

Chorus
Rose of Sharon now blooming I see,
Blessed Jesus, who died on the tree;
With my whole heart I sing "Hallelujah!"
Rose of Sharon, so precious to me.

Precious Savior, I'll always adore Thee,
For with Thee no one else can compare;
By Thy Love so divine, I'm enraptured,
Thou are fairer than all of the fair.

Chorus
Rose of Sharon now blooming I see,
Blessed Jesus, who died on the tree;
With my whole heart I sing "Hallelujah!"
Rose of Sharon, so precious to me.

Are you lost in your sins ~ tired of living?
Is your heart filled with bitterness, too?
Come to Jesus, the sweet Rose of Sharon,
He has the power to make you anew.

Chorus
Rose of Sharon now blooming I see,
Blessed Jesus, who died on the tree;
With my whole heart I sing "Hallelujah!"
Rose of Sharon, so precious to me.

Love of God~

2007-11-29T21:34:00.001-07:00

From a strictly Mathematical Viewpoint:

What Equals 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been in situations where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 101%? What equals 100% in life?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these Questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1 9 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R- K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

And

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

AND, look how far the love of God will take you

L- O- V- E-O-F-G-O-D

12+15+22+5+15+6+7+15+4 = 101%

Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that:
While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Love of God that will put you over the top!

Great is his faithfulness

2007-11-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

Isn't our Lord wonderful. Great is his faithfulness.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Refrain

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Refrain

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Refrain

Martyrs for the Lord

2007-11-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

This is a wonderful song found in a book called China's Christian Martyrs by Paul Hattaway.

Martyrs for the Lord

Chorus:

To be a martyr for the Lord, to be a martyr for the Lord
I am willing to die gloriously for the Lord

Those apostles who loved the Lord to the end
Willingly followed the Lord down the path of suffering
John was exiled to the lonely isle of Patmos
Stephen was stoned to death by an angry crowd

Matthew was stabbed to death in Persia by a mob
Mark died as horses pulled his two legs apart
Doctor Luke was cruelly hanged
Peter, Philip and Simon were crucified on a cross

bartholoew was skinned alive by the heathen
Thomas died in India as five horses pulled his body apart
The apostle James was beheaded by King Herod
Little James was cut in half by a sharp saw

James the brother of the Lord was stoned to death
Judas was tied to a pillar and shot by arrows
Matthias had his head cut off in Jerusalem
Paul was a martyr under Emperor Nero

I am willing to take up the cross and go forward
To follow the apostles down the road to sacrifice
That tens of thousands of precious souls can be saved
I am willing to leave all and be a martyr for the Lord.

let there be light

2007-11-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface
of the deep..
Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. Genesis 1

Is your life full of darkness and a mess?
Come to Jesus. Be willing to turn away from your sin, ask him to help you.
He will bring light into your life.

Jesus will save you from your sins

2007-11-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

In the Beginning was the word and the word was God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. John 1
Jesus Christ came into this world to save you and me. The first Promise in the New testament is like this. " His name is Jesus, he will save his people from their sins" Matthew 1: 21

Ask Jesus to save you from your sins.

Nothing can separate us from God's love

2007-11-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?

Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself.

Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 31-39

God's Billboard

2007-10-18T18:21:00.000-06:00

I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness. Jeremiah 31:3

(Double click on the Billboard pic. there are other messages as well)

Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?

2007-10-08T14:26:00.000-06:00

Did you feel the mountains tremble?
Did you hear the oceans roar?
When the people rose to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one

Did you feel the people tremble?
Did you hear the singers roar?
When the lost began to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one

And we can see that God you're moving
A mighty river through the nations
And young and old will turn to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord

Open up the doors and let the music play
Let the streets resound with singing
Songs that bring your hope
Songs that bring your joy
Dancers who dance upon injustice

Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokeness

And here we see that God you're moving
A time of Jubilee is coming
When young and old return to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord

Martin Smith

God loves you!

2007-09-25T15:16:00.000-06:00

Dear friend,

Did you know that God loves you so very much that he gave his Only son that if you turn from your sin, believe in Jesus who died for your sins, trusting in him as Lord & Savior, you will be saved.

God loves you with an infinite love. He is waiting to bless you.
Give your life to Jesus, He is waiting to give his best to you.

The Enemy's Battle Plan

2007-09-13T01:36:00.000-06:00

As I was praying on April 25th, 2000, I began to see in my mind a picture of the Lord. He was sitting on a rock and groups of people of all ages were gathered around Him. They all seemed to be laughing and talking together. I felt joy and peace and happiness as I viewed this scene. At times, the Lord would reach down and bring a child onto His lap. Or, He would reach out and a baby would be placed into His arms. He would then gaze down into the face of the baby and speak softly and tenderly to the baby. At other times, someone would draw close to His side, and He would place His arm around them, and draw them closer to Him.

An angel approached the Lord. The crowd before the Lord parted to allow the angel to draw near to the Lord. A silence fell over the laughing, joyous crowd as the angel stopped before the Lord and began to speak. From the way this angel was dressed, I sensed immediately that this was a warring angel. Being a warring angel and well aware of the coming battle plan of the enemy, he spoke with a strong sense of urgency and even perplexity in his voice. He was very concerned.

"There is work to be done," the angel said to the Lord. "Why do the people only sit here idly? These are dangerous times. The people should be doing battle in prayer and in the spirit. Instead, they sit here at Your feet, laughing. They are completely unaware of what is even now transpiring in the courts of hell." With great concern in his voice, the angel asked, " Why are You allowing this?"

[Before continuing the vision, as a side bar to that conversation, I had the impression the angel and the Lord had been in each other's presence numerous times and had many conversations with one another. What the angel said did not sound disrespectful or challenging at all. I could feel how he was feeling, and it was a genuine question in the midst of such perplexing opposition to come.]

The Lord gazed with love at the angel before Him. "Before I answer your questions," the Lord replied, "take this child of Mine and show them what is being planned by the enemy."

Both the angel and the Lord then turned their heads and stared at me. "This will be too much for her," the angel protested.

"Take her, and show her," the Lord repeated. (The angel bowed his head to the Lord, then turned towards me.)

I began to back nervously away as the angel approached me. "Where are you taking me?" I asked the angel.

"To the enemy's camp," the angel replied.

"Go with him," the Lord instructed me.

I felt very nervous and afraid, but allowed the angel to touch me. As soon as the angel touched me, we were in darkness. I felt fear engulf me.

"Fear not," the angel said to me, and instantly, the fear vanished.

The darkness seemed to dissipate, and I discovered that the angel and I were in what appeared to be a great court. A man was sitting on a large throne, and before him were gathered all types of creatures and men. (This "court" had the appearance of a cave. When I first viewed this scene, I felt stunned. I'm not sure why. It was like something "rebelled" in me at what I was seeing.)

"Who is that man on the throne?" I asked the angel. "And who are the creatures and men gathered before him?"

"That is the accuser of the brethren and his armies," the angel replied.

I then realized that I was in the presence of Satan. (When the angel informed me that this man was Satan, the fact that he was sitting on a throne amazed me. Later, when I prayed about this aspect of the vision, I felt that the Lord said that Satan was trying to copy everything that was God's in heaven, for himself.)

Satan was speaking, and I heard him say, "This will be our strategy." He then got up from his throne and went to stand in front of a large map on the wall behind him. As I stared at the map, I became aware that it was a map of the entire world. (It is very hard to describe this "map." The map wasn't actually "pinned" or "hanging" on the wall, but it was in front of the wall. But, it was like I could see it from all angles. And also, I could see like "air waves," "wind currents," the tides of the seas, etc. I could also see the hemisphere around the world ~~ moons, stars, planets, etc. I really have no words or way to correctly put down the appearance of this "map.")

Satan began to divide the world into sections. Then, he called out some names. I saw the creatures and the men gathered before satan part, and very large and strong looking angelic beings approached satan. (I saw four of these mighty looking angelic beings.) I could sense the power of these beings, and sensed the evil and wickedness of that power. A hush had fallen over the crowd.

"Who are these beings?" I whispered to the angel who I was with.

The angel I was with seemed concerned. "They are satan's princes."

Satan began speaking again, and he was assigning sections of the world to each of these "princes."

"You will need your armies," satan said to them. "Choose whoever you will. All is at your disposal."

The large beings then began to pick and choose who would be in their particular army. (This was by no means "orderly." There was a great deal of arguing, bickering, etc.) When they were finished, they all turned back to satan and stared at him.

"Each prince will teach you our strategy to deceive and to destroy and to slay mankind," satan said. "Go with them."

The princes and their armies began to exit from the presence of satan. The angel and I began to follow one of the groups. They went into what appeared to be a school room. The prince went to the front of the room and began to instruct his army on how to deceive, destroy and slay the people in their particular section of the world that had been allocated to them. The angel and I then went to each "classroom." The same plans and strategies were being "taught" in each "classroom." (By the "same" plans, I don't mean each class was teaching the exact same thing. What I mean, is that each class was very thorough in what it was teaching, and on how to apply what was being taught.)

In some of the classrooms, they were studying political leaders. Their families, homes, lifestyles, etc., were being closely scrutinized. I felt very frightened and helpless, very overwhelmed, as I saw and heard how very thorough these "lessons," for lack of a better word, were. Nothing was left to chance. Every area of these political leaders' lives was being dissected and investigated and studied. Demons were being assigned on how to "attack" and influence and "control" each of these political leaders, their families, and even their friends and co-workers. Nothing was left to chance. Nothing was overlooked. The books they read, the radio stations they listened to, etc., everything, everything was being discussed. The enormity of all of this was absolutely mind boggling to me. This also occurred with the religious leaders.

It was the "religion" classes that frightened and shocked me the most. In these classes, religions of the nations were being studied and discussed. Even New Age and occult, wicca, tarot, etc., were being discussed. Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., were being discussed. The bibles and books and other writings for all of these religions were being read and studied. Each denomination of Christianity was being studied. The Bible being studied was the major source of information for these "lessons." This was truly horrifying and shocking to me that demons were reading and studying the Bible. And, it was all for the intent to twist what was written, and to seek ways to misinterpret, misrepresent, etc., it to Christians. The demons were discussing ways to "dilute" the Gospel. They were discussing ways to "incorporate" major beliefs from all the religions into one big acceptable "gospel for humankind."

Some of the demons in these religion classes were ordered to "infiltrate" churches, were being taken into actual churches, and were watching how the people prayed, worshipped, sang, etc. They were studying how messages were being delivered to the congregations in numerous churches. They were studying the individuals who were used in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit. These individuals were followed around constantly by assigned demons, who watched and listened to everything these people said and did. The friends and family members of these individuals were also studied. The demons discussed ways to drive wedges, etc., between those people who were truly being used of God, and the people they went to church with, and even how to cause these peoples' own pastors and spiritual leaders to lose faith and confidence in these people who were used in the gifts of the Spirit. I felt so angry and frustrated and helpless as I saw and heard how this was to be accomplished, and how it had already been initiated in many, many congregations, and how it was largely succeeding.

Many of these "religious" demons, for lack of a better word, were being taught how to sing in churches, how to dance in the Spirit, how to pray and teach. I felt at times as if I were going to vomit as I witnessed many demons in these classrooms "practicing" how to worship the Lord, and how to be a Christian. Seeing a demon "dancing before the Lord" is so awful, and so sickening, that there are just no words to describe it adequately.

Some of these more "major" demons, could also work "signs, and wonders, and even miracles." Some of these demons, were also being taught how to be "Christ." This was being done, by actually studying the scriptures. Seeing some of these demons acting and speaking like Christ, shocked me speechless. Seeing them reading the Bible, was like an abomination to me.

In some of these classes, even UFO's and aliens were being discussed, and how to deceive people through these phenomenon. There were classrooms where food and dress and slang words - yes, slang words(!) were being studied. Crops were being studied and discussed. All of this was just so vast, it overwhelmed me.

Suddenly, the "classes" began to leave the rooms. The angel and I followed them. They congregated back in front of satan.

"Report," satan said. "How will we deceive, destroy and slay mankind?"

One of the princes came forward and began to outline their plans and strategies to satan.

"The people want signs and wonders and miracles from their religious leaders," the prince said. "We know that our enemy will be, and has begun already, to grant this unto his children. We will slip in with a counterfeit move, and deceive many. We have taught our armies how to mimic worship, praise, and looking and acting like a true believer. We will give unto our armies the ability to work signs, wonders and even miracles. But while all become focused upon these outward manifestations, others of us will begin behind the scenes to dilute the message of the gospel. We will accomplish this partly through speaking to the people about God's 'true' nature. We will allow the people to create God into what and who they want Him to be."

"Good," satan said. "Very good."

The prince began to speak once again. "When the people have created their own version of God, then, we will give them OUR god."

The crowd before satan began to cheer wildly.

"We must depart !" the angel urged me.

Suddenly, we were back before the Lord. He was still in the midst of His children; laughing with them, talking to them, touching them.

A silence fell over the group once again as the angel I was with once more approached the Lord. The angel reported to the Lord all we had heard and seen in hell.

The angel was very concerned and distressed, asking, "Why are You just sitting here with the people? Why haven't they been sent to begin battle? How will they be able to discern this coming great deception if they aren't even aware that one is coming?"

The Lord became grave. His face as He looked at His children was alight with His great love for them. I noticed tears in His eyes. Then, He turned His head and looked at the angel speaking with Him.

"My children will know the false, by knowing the true," the Lord said. "The longer they spend in My Presence, the more they will know My voice when they hear it. A voice of a stranger, they will not follow."

"But the enemy has those who have been taught to speak just as You do," the angel protested. "They sound almost just like You."

"Almost," the Lord replied gently. "Almost they sound like Me. Only My sheep who have lingered long in My Presence will know the voice of their true Shepherd. And this is why I spend so much time with My children. I spend as much time with them as they allow Me to. I know very well what the enemy is planning. My plans are plans of love and fellowship."

The angel and the Lord both fell silent as they gazed at the crowd before the Lord. "Love them well!" the angel replied.

"Yes, a battle is coming," the Lord sighed, and I saw tears in His eyes. "Great wickedness and persecution upon My children; My true children who know My voice. A time of wickedness and persecution such as has never been seen or experienced. Yet in the midst of it all, I will move, I will bless, I will speak, I will love. I will win. There are those of My children who sense much of this. They are the ones who will never stop praying and interceding; not even in times of seeming peace."

"What about me, Lord?" I asked.

The angel and the Lord looked at me. "Pray," the Lord replied. "Tell the prayer warriors to strengthen themselves and their brothers and sisters in the times of peace. I will be pouring out of My Spirit upon all nations and peoples. It will spread to even the most unlikely of places~~ television, magazines, newspapers, radios, even the Internet. And it will be here that the battle will truly begin, and the deception begin."

The Lord stood up.

"It is time?" the angel asked Him.

"It is time," the Lord replied.

Then, I was no longer with the Lord or the angel, but praying once again.

John 10 is in my mind; especially verse 14 ~~ "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."

HLM

the deception of Satan

2007-09-08T00:33:00.000-06:00

In Genesis 3:1, we can see how Satan attacks. It says
there that the serpent was the craftiest of all the animals.
Satan entered that serpent (just like the demons entered
the pigs when Jesus cast them out of the man of Gadara).
And Satan spoke to Eve through the serpent and asked
her "Has God indeed said - You shall not eat of every tree
of the garden?" When Eve said that this was indeed what
God had said, Satan countered God's Word and said,
"You shall not die". Notice how Satan comes. First of all,
he questions God's Word. That is how he comes to us
too. "Has God really said that we are not to do that?", he
asks, "What's wrong in doing this? These Biblical
commands are old-fashioned. They were written for that
time and that culture in which Paul lived. They are not
meant to be literally obeyed by us in the 20th century",
etc., etc.,

We find young and old people asking such questions
constantly, little realizing that they are becoming
mouthpieces of Satan. Even when their conscience tells
them that something is wrong, they still use their reason
and question what God has forbidden. When something is
commanded or forbidden by God in His Word, we can be
sure that God has a very good reason for doing so. But
Satan always makes us question whether God really
meant it like that etc., And what is Satan's ultimate aim in
making us question God's Word? Exactly the same as
was his aim in Eve's case - to take us away from the
Lord, and to compel God to reject us and cast us out,
even as He cast Adam and Eve out of His presence.

Jesus once said that Satan was a thief. Satan does not
steal money, for he knows that money has no eternal
value. He steals only what has eternal value - primarily the
souls of men. Jesus said further that after Satan steals,
he kills and destroys what he has stolen (John 10:10). In
contrast, Jesus went on to say, that He Himself had come
to give us abundant life. Isn't it amazing that in a world of
5,500 million people, more than 99% of the people prefer
to believe Satan's lies and to obey him rather than believe
in Jesus Christ and obey the Word of God. There we can
see what a tremendous work Satan has done in
convincing people that it is not a serious matter to
disobey God's Word.

When people take their first drink of alcohol, or smoke
their first cigarette, or begin to take drugs like heroin and
cocaine, do you think Satan warns them that these will
destroy their bodies and minds on earth and finally send
their souls to Hell for eternity? No. He doesn't tell them
the truth - for that would be unpleasant to hear. He tells
them that they will get a kick out of trying it, and that they
can have some enjoyment out of it. That is what Satan
told Eve too. And that is how he is deceiving millions of
young people around the world today. Even if it is a matter
of immorality or stealing other people's things, Satan
says, "What's wrong with that? Don't be guided by
outmoded 19th-century ideas" etc., Be careful of these
thoughts that Satan puts into your mind. His ultimate
purpose is to destroy you. We see in verse 6 that as soon
as Eve saw that the tree was good for food, her body was
drawn to it. That forbidden fruit has many 20th century
counterparts. Many things that God has forbidden, we will
find our bodies being drawn to. The Word of God goes on
to say that Eve found the tree to be a delight to her eyes
too. Our eyes will find many things very pleasing that God
has forbidden us to even look at.

It says further that Eve found the fruit appealing to her
mind as well. She saw the fruit as something that could
make her wise. Our minds too are attracted to many
things that God has forbidden. Be careful when your body
and mind are drawn to something that your conscience
tells you is wrong. I am sure that at that moment Eve's
conscience told her clearly that what she was going to do
was wrong. She knew very well that God had told her not
to eat that fruit. But what did she do? Because her body
and her mind both wanted the fruit, she convinced herself
that there was nothing wrong in eating it. So she killed her
conscience and took the fruit and ate it. What did Satan
accomplish by making Eve sin? Many years earlier, he
himself had fallen from God's presence. Once he had
become evil, he was determined to make others evil too. It
is the same with the human race now. When a person
does something evil, he is not happy in being alone in the
evil he has done. He wants to get others to do the same
evil too.

In Proverbs 1:10, it says: "Don't go along with someone
who leads you to do evil". Satan became evil and he
wanted to drag Eve down with him too. And when Eve had
partaken of that poisonous spirit, she wanted to drag her
husband down. So she took another fruit and gave it to her
husband. That is how evil has multiplied in the world
through all the centuries. One man becomes evil and he
drags others down with him. That is why we need to be
alert always. Satan comes to us at times like a roaring
lion. If he always came as a roaring lion, we would
recognise him easily. But he doesn't always come like
that. He sometimes comes as a sweet "angel of light" (2
Cor.11:14). It is then that we have to be really careful.
Consider the time when Jesus told his disciples that He
was going to suffer and die on the cross, Peter said "No ,
Lord, don't let that happen to You". But Jesus
immediately turned around and told Peter "Get behind me
Satan". He recognized that the suggestion to avoid the
way of suffering was the voice of Satan, even though it
came through Peter. Jesus knew that He had to go to the
cross, because that was the only way man's sins could
be forgiven. Peter did not know that. Peter was well-
meaning, but he didn't realize at that moment that Satan
was speaking through him to try and stop Jesus from
going to the cross. Yes, Satan can come to us even
through a close friend and suggest something that sounds
compassionate and good humanly speaking. So we must
be alert at all times. The one thing we must all covet is a
sensitive conscience - something that speaks to us loudly
even when we do a small wrong.

ZP

Jesus loves you

2007-09-04T01:26:00.000-06:00

Jesus loves you so very much.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

If God is for us, who can be against us.
We do not have a hight priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin.
So let's go to the throne of grace and receive grace and mercy in our time of need. Amen!

scriptures: JOhn 3: 16, Romans 5:8; 8:31,32; Hebrews 4: 15

Have faith in God

2007-09-01T18:01:00.000-06:00

Your faith has saved you. Luke 7:50

What does it mean to have faith.
Faith is the absolute confidence in God's perfect love for you,
absolute confidence in his infallible wisdom and absolute confidence in his almighty power.

God demonstrated his great love toward us, that he gave us his only begotten son. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Is it difficult to have faith in such a wonderful God who loves us so perfectly.

True faith always leads us to obedience. Let's then obey the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ found in the pages of the New & Old testaments.

Repent & believe

2007-09-01T01:54:00.001-06:00

Jesus said in Mark 1: 15 "Repent and believe in the gospel"

What does it mean to Repent?
True repentance involves a change of mind about sin and a willingness to turn away from it.
Sin is worse than any sickness, it has eternal consequences.
Cancer may kill the physical body but sin has the potential to cause destruction of the soul forever. That's why it is so important to turn away from sin. If sin & its consequences were to be a simple matter, God wouldn't have sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

The gospel is the good news about Jesus.
Jesus came to save us from our sins. He came to pay the penalty for our past sins, to save us from our present temptations and to save us from the presence of sin in the future.

So let's rejoice in the fact that Jesus has come, let's surrender our entire life to him trusting in his love for us. Amen!

Be of good cheer

2007-08-25T00:44:00.000-06:00

Olives that have known no pressure
No oil can bestow
If the grapes escapes the winepress
Cheering wine can never flow
Spikinard only through the crushing
Fragrance shall diffuse
Shall I then Lord shrink from suffering
Which Thy love for me would choose

Chorus
Each blow I suffer
Is true gain to me
In the place of what Thou takest
Thou dost give Thyself to me

~Watchman Nee

A vision of heaven

2007-08-18T23:42:00.000-06:00

..In my vision I thought that so far as the world was concerned, Agur's
prayer [from Proverbs] was answered in regard to me, for I had neither

poverty nor riches. All my wants were supplied. I had leisure, and friends,
and home, and all that was necessary to make me happy.

Then also, I thought that I was a Christian. Most of my close friends professed to be the same. We visited together at each other's homes, joined in amuse- ments, business, politics and many other things. In short, we bought and sold, and married, and acted as though the world we were in were going to last forever.

In this vision I was one who was active in religious activities. In fact, I
considered myself to be quite a shining light. I always attended church on
Sunday and I taught in the Sunday School. Now and then, though not very
often, I visited the sick. And in addition to these good deeds I gave a
little money to support Christian work.

In all this I was quite sincere. I had no idea of playing the hypocrite. It's
true that I didn't stop to consider what Christianity really was, although
I talked freely enough about it at times, and pitied people who didn't
profess to be Christians.

I seldom, if ever, considered what Jesus Christ required. Nor was I very
concerned about the lost, although I heard these matters occasionally
discussed in my presence. I had gotten into a definite rut in thought and
action and profession. And I went on from day to day, hoping that everything
would turn out all right in the end.

But in my vision I thought that without any apparent warning a dangerous
fever seized me. I became terribly sick all of a sudden. In fact, in just a
few hours I was brought to the very brink of death. This was serious business, indeed. Everyone about me was in great confusion. And those who loved me were paralyzed with fear.

Some took action. The proper medicines were administered. There were
consultations among several physicians. And the members of my family hurried
to my side from far and near. Friends and acquaintances came.

I was given the best medical care possible - but all proved in vain.

I could feel that the medicines weren't helping. And yet I didn't feel anything very much. I don't know whether this was because of the suddenness of the sickness or the deadening character of the narcotics which the physicians gave me. But strangely enough I seemed to be the least disturbed person in the place.

I felt as though I were in a dream. I knew I was ill - dangerously ill -
because a relative had insisted on my being informed of my real condition.
And yet I was not disturbed about the fact. I thought I would recover.

Most people do, I suppose, until the hand of death is actually upon them.

And if I did not recover, I had no reason to be terribly concerned, because,
wasn't I a Christian? Hadn't I been converted? Didn't I believe the Bible?
Why should I fear?

And wasn't I continually hearing hymns being sung and prayers offered that I
might be restored to health, and if not, that I might pass away without
suffering, and have a good time of it in heaven?

But even so, disquieting thoughts did cross my mind - because I couldn't
keep out questions that kept arising as to whether I had truly followed
Jesus Christ and had done my duty to a perishing world with my time and
influence, and money and family. And questions would come and go that were
very difficult indeed to answer. Yet it was all in a dreamy way. How could
it be otherwise, with the burning fever lapping up the vital current, and my
brain all benumbed, and my energies laid prostrate.

So when I complained that I didn't have much joy or assurance, I quite
naturally agreed readily to the suggestion that my condition prevented this.
And I felt, moreover, that if I were not "ready" I had neither the time nor
energy to begin so serious a business over again as the salvation of my
soul. Besides, how could I confess that I had been mistaken all these years,
and that my life had been a failure? No! It was too late, and I was too ill
for any such confession.

One thing I could do, and that I did. I cast myself, with what force of soul
I had left, on the mercy of my Savior. And again and again I repeated a
verse which had always been a favorite of mine:

"I am a poor sinner, just nothing at all,
But Jesus Christ is my all in all."

It was with this sentence on my lips - a sentence taken up and reproduced at
my funeral service - that a cold numbness seemed to come creeping over me,
and a great difficulty of breathing seized me. My friends were alarmed. I
read it in their faces. Some prayed, while others wept. And my dear ones
moistened my lips and kissed my brow.

Meanwhile a strange faintness seized me. I lost consciousness.

ENTRANCE INTO HEAVEN

My next sensation was altogether beyond description. It was the thrill of a new and celestial existence. I was in heaven.

After the first feeling of surprise had somewhat subsided, I looked around
me, and took in the situation. It was way beyond anything of earth -
positively delightful. And yet some of the more beautiful scenes and sounds
and feelings of the world I had just left appeared to be repeated in my new
experience in enchanting fashion. Still no human eyes ever beheld such
perfection, such beauty. No earthly ear ever heard such music. No human
heart ever experienced such ecstasy, as it was my privilege to see, hear,
and feel in the celestial country.

Above me was the loveliest of blue skies. Around me was an atmosphere so
balmy that it made my whole physical frame vibrate with pleasure. Flowing by
the bank of roses on which I found myself reclining was the clearest and
purest water of a river that seemed to dance with delight to its own
murmurings. The trees that grew upon the banks were covered with the
greenest foliage, and laden with most delicious fruit - sweet beyond all
earthly sweetness. And by lifting up my hand I could pluck and taste.

In every direction above and around me the whole air seemed not only to be
laden with the sweetest perfumes coming from the fairest flowers, but filled
with the fairest forms. For, floating around me were beautiful beings whom I
felt by instinct were angels and archangels, seraph and seraphim, cherub and
cherubim, together with the perfect blood-washed saints who had come from
our own world. They were sometimes far, and again coming nearer.

The whole sky at times seemed to be full of white-winged, happy, worshiping,
joyous beings. And the whole country, apparently of limitless extent, was
filled with a blissful ecstasy that could only be known by being experienced.

You may perhaps imagine my sensation. At first I was swallowed up with a
sort of ecstatic intoxication, which feeling was immediately enhanced by the
consciousness that I was safe, saved, to suffer and sin no more.

And then suddenly, a new set of feelings began to creep over me. Strange as
it may seem, I felt somewhat lonely and a little sad, even in the midst of
this infinite state of bliss. Because up to this moment I was alone. Not one
of the bright beings who were soaring and singing in the bright ether above
me, nor the ones who were hastening hither and thither, as though bent upon
some high mission, had spoken to me or approached me.

I was alone in heaven! Then, in a still stranger and mysterious way, I
appeared to feel in myself a sort of unfitness for the society of those pure
beings who were sailing around me in indescribable loveliness. How could it
be? Had I come there by mistake? Was I not counted worthy of this glorious
inheritance? It was indeed a mystery.

AN EVALUATION OF MY LIFE

My thoughts went back to earth. And all before me, as though unfolded by an
angel's hand, the record of my past life was unrolled before my eyes. What a
record it was! I glanced over it. And in a glance I seemed to master its
entire contents - so rapidly, indeed, that I became conscious of a marvelous
quickening of my intellectual powers. I realized that I could take in and
understand in a moment what would have required a day with my poor, darkened faculties on earth.

With my quickened mind, I saw, to my delight, at that very first glance,
that this register of my earthly existence - the Divine biography of my
life - contained no record of any misdeeds before my conversion. Indeed,
that part of my life seemed to be very much of a blank. I further perceived
that neither was there any record of the sins I had done since that time. It
was as though some friendly hand had gone through the roll and blotted out
the record of the evil doings of my life. This was very gratifying. I felt
like shouting praises to God, who had delivered me from the pain of having
these things staring me in the face in this beautiful, holy land, among all
these holy beings, where it seemed to me that the very memory of sin would
defile.

Nevertheless, a further glance at my record appalled me, for there was
written therein - leaving out, as I have said, the sins of commission -
there was written the exact daily record of the whole of my past life! In
fact, it went much deeper, because it described in full detail the object
for which I had lived. It recorded my thoughts and feelings and actions -
how and for what I had employed my time, my money, my influence, and all the other talents and gifts which God had entrusted me with to spend for His
glory and for the salvation of the lost.

Every chapter of this record carried my thoughts back to the condition of
the world I had left. And there came up before my eyes a vivid picture of
its hatred for God, its rejection of Christ, its wickedness, with all the
wretchedness and destitution and abomination. It utterly appalled me. Also
into my ears there came a hurricane of cursing and blasphemy, and a wail of
anguish and woe that stunned me.

I had seen these sights and had heard these sounds before, not too often, it
is true, because I had hid myself from them. But now they blinded and stunned me. They appeared a million times blacker and more vile, more wretched and piteous, than they had ever seemed before!

I felt like putting my hands before my eyes, and my fingers in my ears to
shut these things out from sight and hearing, so intensely real and present
did they seem. They wrung my soul with sorrow and self-reproach, because on
the "Record of Memory" I saw how I had occupied myself during the few years
which I had been allowed to live amidst all these miseries, after Jesus Christ had called me to be His soldier. I was reminded how, instead of fighting His battles, instead of saving souls by bringing them to His feet, and so preparing them for admission into this lovely place, I had been on the contrary, intent on earthly things, selfishly seeking my own, spending my life in practical unbelief, disloyalty and disobedience.

I felt sick at heart. Oh, if at that moment I could have crept out of the
"land of pure delight" about which I had sung so much in the past, and could
have gone back to the world of darkness, sin and misery, which I had just
left - if I could but spend another lifetime among the lost and dying, and
truly follow my Lord!

But that could not be. My opportunities of earth were past. Heaven must now
be my dwelling forever. And contradictory as it may seem, this thought
filled my soul with unspeakable regret.

And then came another thought, more wild than any that had gone before it.
(You must remember that it is a vision I am relating.) It was this: Would it
be possible for me to obtain permission to go back to the world, to that very part of it from which I had come, clothed in some human form, and live my earthly life over again - live it in a manner worthy of my profession, worthy of my Christ and my opportunity? Could this be?

If at that moment an answer in the affirmative had been brought to me, I
would have gladly given up my heavenly blessedness. I would have gladly
undergone ages of hardship, ignominy, poverty and pain. I would have given
up a million dollars in money. Yes, I would have gladly given a world, if it
had been mine to give! But I could see no hope for a second probation. What
was to be done?

THREE VISITORS

I had not been musing in this way for many seconds, for thoughts appeared to
flow with remarkable rapidity, when, quick as a lightning flash, one of those bright inhabitants which I had watched floating far off in the clouds of glory, descended and stood before my astonished gaze.

I can never forget the awe-struck feelings with which I beheld this heavenly
being. Describe the shape and features and bearing of this noble form I
cannot, and will not attempt it. He was at the same time angelic and human,
earthly and yet celestial. I discerned therefore at a glance that he was one
of the "blood-washed multitude" who had "come out of the great tribulations
of earth." I not only judged from a certain majestic appearance which he
bore, but from instinct I felt that the being before me was a man, a
redeemed and glorified man.

He looked at me. And I could not keep from returning his gaze. His eyes
compelled me. And I confess I was ravished by his beauty. I could never have
believed the human face divine could ever bear so grand a stamp of dignity
and charm.

But far beyond the entrancing loveliness of those celestial features was the
expression which filled his total countenance, and shone through those eyes
that were gazing upon me. It was as though that face was only a sunlit
window, through which I could see into the depths of the pure, kindly and
tender soul within.

I don't know how I looked to my beautiful visitor. I don't know what form I
had. I had not seen myself in a mirror since I had taken on immortality for
mortality.

It was evident that he had a deep interest in me. But it was an interest
which seemed to bring sadness to him. His features seemed to me to grow
almost sorrowful as I sat there with my eyes fixed on him in a fascinated
spell.

He spoke first. Had he not done so I could never have summoned courage to
address him. His voice was soft and musical, and fitted well with the seriousness of his bearing. I understood him almost before I heard his words, although I cannot tell now what language he spoke. I suppose it was the universal language of heaven.

This was the substance of what he said: My arrival was known throughout a
certain district of the celestial regions, where were gathered the ransomed
ones who had come from the earthly neighborhood where I had lived. The
tidings of my arrival had been flashed through the heavenly telephone, which
spoke not in one ear only, but in every ear in that particular region. My
name had been whispered in every hillside and echoed in every valley, and
had been spoken in every room of every mansion. It had been proclaimed from
every tower and pinnacle of the stupendous temple in which these glorified
saints day and night present their worship to the great Father.

All who had known me on earth, all who had any knowledge of my family, my
opportunities for helping forward the Kingdom of Christ, whom they
worshipped and adored, were burning to see me and hear me tell of the
victories I had won and the souls I had blessed while on earth. And all were
especially anxious to hear if I had been the means of bringing salvation to
the loved ones they had left behind.

All this was poured upon my soul. I didn't know which way to look. Again and
again I remembered my life of ease and comfort. What could I say? How could
I appear with the record of my life before these waiting ones? What was
there in it except a record of self-gratification? I had no martyr stories
to tell. I had sacrificed nothing worth naming on earth, much less in
heaven, for His dear sake!

My mind was running in this direction when I think my visitor must have
discovered something of what I was thinking, and felt pity for me. Seeing my
consternation, he spoke again.

"Where you find yourself is not actually heaven," he said, "but only its
forecourt, a sort of outer circle. Presently, the Lord Himself, with a great
procession of His chosen ones will come to take you into the Celestial City
itself. There is where your residence will be if He deems you worthy; that
is, if your conduct on the battlefield below has pleased Him.

"Meanwhile, I have obtained permission to come and speak to you concerning
a soul who is very dear to me. I understand he lives in the neighborhood where you recently lived, and from which have just come. Our knowledge of the affairs of earth is, for our own sakes, limited, but now and then we are
permitted to get a glimpse.

"Can you," he said, "tell me anything about my son? He was my only son. I
loved him dearly. I loved him too much. I spoiled him when a child! He had
his own way. He grew up willful, passionate and disobedient. And my example
didn't help him."

Here a cloud for a moment came over the beautiful brow, but vanished as
quickly as it came. "Memory has been busy, but that has all gone," he said,
as though talking to himself. And then he finished the story of his prodigal
son. He, the father, had been rescued, washed, regenerated. He had learned
to fight for souls, and had won many to the blood-stained banner. Then he
had suddenly been taken in death by an accident at his work and was taken to Heaven.

"And now," he added, "where is my boy? Give me tidings of my boy! He lived
near you, and had business dealings with you. What did you do for him? Is
there hope? Tell me what his feelings are today."

He stopped speaking. My heart sank within me. What could I say? I knew the
boy. The story of the father's death and his prodigal son had been told me.
I had never spoken one serious word to the boy about his soul or about his
Savior. I had been busy about other things. And now, what could I say to his
father, who stood before me? I was speechless!

The cloud that I had noticed before again came over the face of my visitor,
but with a dark shadow this time. He must have guessed the truth. He looked
at me with a look in which I felt that disappointment to himself and pity
for me were combined. He then spread his wings and soared away.

I was so intently gazing after his retreating form that I hadn't noticed a second fair being, who had descended from above, and who now occupied the
place abandoned only a moment before by my last visitor.

I turned and looked upon the newcomer. This was a spirit of the same class,
of the same ransomed multitude who once were dwellers on earth. There was a dignity of bearing, the same marvelous expression of inward power, purity,
and joy. But in this case there was a beauty (which I could have imagined)
of more delicate and enthralling mold.

Beautiful as I thought my first visitor to be, more beautiful than conception or dream of earth could be, yet here was a beauty that surpassed it - not, perhaps, if judged from heaven's view, but judged from my standpoint, for it must be remembered that I was still a man. My former visitor I have said was a glorious man - this one was evidently the glorified form of a woman.

I had, when on earth, sometimes thought that I could have wished for the
privilege of beholding Eve in the hour when she came forth from the hands of
her Maker. And I had imagined something - only something, of what her
beautiful form must have been as she sprang into being on that bridal morning, young and pure and beautiful - the fair image of her Maker - perhaps, the sweetest work of God. Now, here I saw her - I saw Eve reproduced before my eyes as young, pure and beautiful, even more beautiful than her first mother could possibly have been, for was not this His finished work?

But I was soon awakened from my dream by the voice of the fair creature who, from her manner, evidently wished to speak to me on some matter of great importance.

She told me her name. I had heard it on earth. She was a widow who had
struggled through great difficulties. Her husband's death had resulted in her conversion to Christ. Converted, she had given herself up unreservedly to fight for the Lord. Her children had been her first care. They had all been saved, and were fighting for God, except one.

The mention of that name brought the same saddening cloud on her lovely face which had dimmed the bright face of my first visitor. But the cloud vanished almost as soon as it came. That one, that unsaved one, was a girl who had been her mother's delight. She had grown up beautiful, the village pride, but alas! had gone astray. It was the old story of wrong, and of being
seduced into evil ways. And then of utter abandonment to that way of life,
and all the consequent train of miseries.

I listened. I had known some of the sad story on earth, but I had turned
away from hearing any more about it as being "no concern of mine." Little
did I ever think that I would be confronted with it in heaven!

And now the bright spirit turned those eyes on me that, beaming with love
and concern, were more beautiful than ever. She said again: "My daughter
lived near you. You know her. Have you saved her? I don't know much about
her, but I do know that one earnest and determined effort would save her,
and win her to Christ."

And then again she asked me, "Have you saved my child?"

I must have cried out in agony. I know I put my hands over my eyes, because
I could no longer bear to meet her intent look, which now turned to one of
pity for me.

How long she continued to look on me, with an expression of concern almost
greater than she had shown for her lost child, I do not know. But when I
uncovered my eyes, she was gone, and the silvery sheen of her white wings
marked her out to my seeking eyes like a speck on the distant blue.

Then I cried out, "Oh, my God, is this heaven? Will these questionings go on
forever? Will the meanness and selfishness of my past life haunt me through- out eternity? What shall I do? Can I not go back to earth, and do something to redeem myself from this wretched sense of unworthiness? Can I not live my life over again?"

This question had hardly passed through my mind when there was another rush of wings, and down beside me alighted another form, surprisingly resembling the first that had spoken to me, and yet, oh so very different! But I will not take time to describe him; you must imagine it.

He introduced himself much in the same way as my former visitors. He had
been a great singer, but was awakened and won to Christ only a short while
back. Having had much forgiven, he had loved much. All his desire after his
conversion was to get free from the entanglements of business and to devote
himself a living sacrifice to the saving of men.

When just on the threshold of the realization of his wish, he had been sent
to heaven. And here he was, a spirit of glory and joy, coming to inquire of
me concerning the church group among whom he had labored, and of the crowd of companions he had left behind. Was I acquainted with his little church? Their place of worship was near my place of business. Had I helped them in their difficulties, and in their service and testimony for Christ? Had I
done anything for his old mates, who were drinking and cursing their way to
hell? He had died with prayers for them on his lips. Had I stopped them on
their way to ruin?

Again I could not speak. What could I say? I knew his church. But I had
never given them any encouragement or help. I knew of the hovels in which
his old mates lived, and the dens of hell in which they spent their time and
money. But I had been too busy, or too proud, or too cowardly to seek them
out with the message of the Savior's love.

I was utterly speechless. He guessed my feelings, I suppose, because with a
look of sympathy he left in sadness - at least in as much sadness as is
possible in heaven.

As for myself, I was in anguish - strange as it may appear, considering I
was in heaven. But so it was.

THE KING'S PROCESSION

Wondering whether there was not some comfort for me, I involuntarily looked
around. And I saw a marvelous phenomenon on the horizon at a great distance. All that part of the heavens appeared to be filled with a brilliant light, surpassing the blaze of a thousand suns at noonday. And yet there was no blinding glare making it difficult to gaze upon, as is the case with our own
sun when it shines in its glory. Here was a brilliance far surpassing anything that could be imagined, and yet I could look upon it with pleasure.

As I continued to gaze, wondering what it could be, it appeared to come a
little closer. Then I realized it was coming in my direction. I was still
reclining on the banks of the beautiful river.

And now I could distinctly hear the sound of music. The distance was a great
many miles, after the measurement of earth, but the atmosphere was so clear,
and I found my eyesight so strong, that I could easily see objects at a
distance which, on earth, would have required a powerful telescope.

The sound came closer. It was music, beyond question - and such music as I
had never heard before. But there was a strange commingling of other sounds
which all together made a marvelous melody, made up, as I afterwards
discovered, by the strains that came from the multitude of musicians, and
the shouts and songs that proceeded from innumerable voices. This phenom-enon was approaching rapidly. But my curiosity was so strongly aroused to know what it was, that a few minutes seemed an age.

Finally I was able to make out what it was. It was astounding! But who could
describe it! The whole firmament was filled, as it were, with innumerable
forms, each of beauty and dignity, far surpassing those with whom I had
already made an acquaintance. Here was a representative portion of the
aristocracy of heaven accompanying the King, who came to welcome into the
heaven of heavens the spirits of men and women who had escaped from earth, who had fought the good fight, who had kept the faith, and had overcome in the conflict as He had overcome.

I stood filled with awe and wonder. Could it be possible? Was I at last
actually to see my Lord and be welcomed by Him? In the thought of this
rapture I forgot the sorrow that only a moment before had reigned in my
heart, and my whole nature swelled with expectation and delight.

And now the procession was upon me. I had seen some of the pageants of
earth - displays that required the power of mighty monarchs, and the wealth
of great cities and nations to create - but they were each, or all combined,
as the feeble light of a candle to a tropical sun in comparison with the
tremendous scene which now spread itself before my astonished eyes.

On it came. I had sprung up from my reclining position, and then had fallen
prostrate as the first rank of these shining heavenly spirits neared me.
Each one looked in himself, to my untutored eyes, like a god, so far as
greatness and power could be expressed by the outward appearance of any
being.

Rank after rank swept past me. Each turned his eyes upon me, or seemed to do so. I could not help feeling that I was somewhat an object of pity to them
all. Perhaps it was my own feelings that made me imagine this. But it certainly appeared to me as though these noble beings regarded me as a fearful, cowardly soul, who had only cared for his own interests on earth, and had come up there with the same selfish motives.

On they came. Thousands passed me, yet there appeared to me to be no
diminishment in the numbers yet to come. I looked at the procession as it
stretched backwards, but my eyes could see no end to it. There must have
been millions. It was indeed a "multitude that no man could number."

All were praising God, either in hymns expressive of adoration and worship,
or by recounting, in songs of rapture the mighty victories which they had
witnessed on earth - or describing some wonderful work they had seen
elsewhere.

And now, the great central glory and attraction of the splendid procession
was at hand.

I gathered this from the still more dignified character of the beings who now swept by, the heavier crash of music and the louder shouts of exultation
which came pealing from all around.

I was right, and before I could prepare my spirit for the visitation, it was
upon me. The King was here! In the center of circling hosts - which rose
tier above tier into the blue vault above, turning on Him their millions of
eyes, lustrous with the love they bore Him - I beheld the celestial form of
Him who once died for me upon the cross. The procession halted. Then at a
word of command, they formed up instantly in three sides of a square in
front of me, the King standing in the center immediately opposite the spot
where I had prostrated myself.

What a sight that was! Worth toiling a lifetime to behold it! Nearest to the
King were the patriarchs and apostles of ancient times. Next, rank after
rank, came the holy martyrs who had died for Him. Then came the army of
warriors who had fought for Him in every part of the world.

And around and about, above and below, I beheld myriads and myriads of
spirits who were never heard of on earth outside their own neighborhood, or
beyond their own times, who, with self-denying zeal and untiring toil had
labored to extend God's Kingdom and to save the souls of men. And encircling
the gorgeous scene, above, beneath, around, hovered glittering angelic
beings who had kept their first estate, proud, it seemed to me, to minister
to the happiness and exaltation of these redeemed out of the poor world from
which I came.

FACE TO FACE WITH THE KING

I was bewildered by the scene. The songs, the music, the shouts of the
multitude that came like the roar of a thousand cataracts, echoed and
re-echoed through the sunlit mountains. And the magnificent and endless
array of happy spirits ravished my senses with passionate delight. All at
once, however, I remembered myself, and was reminded of the High Presence
before Whom I was bowed, and lifting up my eyes I beheld Him gazing upon me.

What a look it was! It was not pain, and yet it was not pleasure. It was not
anger, and yet it was not approval. Anyway, I felt that in that face, so
inexpressibly admirable and glorious, there was yet no welcome for me. I had
felt this in the faces of my previous visitors. I felt it again in the
Lord's.

That face, that Divine face, seemed to say to me, for language was not
needed to convey to the very depths of my soul what His feelings were to me:
"Thou wilt feel thyself little in harmony with these, once the companions of
My tribulations and now of My glory, who counted not their lives dear unto
themselves in order that they might bring honor to Me and salvation to men."
And He gave a look of admiration at the host of apostles and martyrs and
warriors gathered around Him.

Oh, that look of Jesus! I felt that to have one such loving recognition - it
would be worth dying a hundred deaths at the stake. It would be worth being
torn asunder by wild beasts. The angelic escort felt it too, for their responsive burst of praise and song shook the very skies and the ground on which I lay.

Then the King turned His eyes on me again. How I wished that some mountain
would fall upon me and hide me forever from His presence! But I wished in
vain. Some invisible and irresistible force compelled me to look up, and my
eyes met His once more. I felt, rather than heard, Him saying to me in words
that engraved themselves as fire upon my brain:

"Go back to earth. I will give thee another opportunity. Prove thyself worthy of My name. Show to the world that thou possessest My spirit by doing My works, and becoming, on My behalf, a savior of men. Thou shalt return hither when thou hast finished the battle, and I will give thee a place in My conquering train, and a share in My glory."

What I felt under that look and those words, no heart or mind could possibly
describe. They were mingled feelings. First came the unutterable anguish
arising out of the full realization that I had wasted my life, that it had been a life squandered on the paltry ambitions and trifling pleasures of earth - while it might have been filled and sown with deeds that would have produced a never-ending harvest of heavenly fruit. My life could have won for me the approval of heaven's King, and made me worthy to be the companion of these glorified heroes.

But combined with this self-reproach there was a gleam of hope. My earnest
desire to return to earth was to be granted. Perhaps it was in response to
the longings I had felt ever since the realization of my earthly failures had dawned upon me that this favor was granted to me. I could have the
privilege of living my life over again. True, it was a high responsibility, but Jesus would be with me. His Spirit would enable me. And in my heart I felt ready to face it.

The cloud of shining ones had vanished. The music was silent. I closed my
eyes and gave myself over, body, soul and spirit, to the disposal of my
Savior - to live, not for my own salvation, but for the glory of my Christ,
and for the salvation of the world. And then and there, the same blessed
voice of my King stole over my heart, as He promised that His presence
should go with me back to earth, and make me more than conqueror through His blood.

And with the joy of this assurance I awoke. The crowd of shining ones had
vanished. The music was silent, and behold it was all a dream.

- by General William Booth (1829-1912)
Founder of the Salvation Army

Three Certainties

2007-08-11T04:14:00.000-06:00

They will fight against you. They will not overcome you I
am with you to deliver you (Jer 1:19). There are three things
that are absolutely certain for the disciples of the Lord, as we
see in the above verse. (1) Satan and his agents will fight
against us. (2) They will not overcome us. (3) The Lord will
always be with us to deliver us.

The certainty of Opposition

As long as we are in the world, we will have to face tribulation,
persecution and trials. It will never be otherwise. So we need
not expect an easy time either in our work-place or in our
personal life in the coming days. Days of financial
difficulties will come. So even now, we must learn to live
simply. Those who live in luxury will find things difficult in the
future. We must be wise in saving some money for the future
so that we don’t have to depend on others. But we must never
depend on our savings. Our trust must be in the Lord alone.
God is a jealous God and He will never allow us to trust in
created things. God is going to shake the world’s financial
systems very soon, so that all those who trust in created
things will be thoroughly shaken. In the coming days, we will
also see brothers betraying their brothers, because all will
seek their own safety. We have already seen something of
that. But we will see more of it in the future. Our own family
members will become our enemies and hate us. Some of us
have already seen a little of that. We will see more of it in the
future. There will also be active persecution of believers in
offices and elsewhere. This will purify us and make us better
Christians. Many believers are hoping that one of these days
all their trails will all be over. But that day will come only when
Jesus returns, not before.

The certainty of Satan’s defeat

It is impossible for Satan or any of his demons or human
agents to defeat us spiritually. 1 Peter 3:13 says that no-one
can harm us if we always seek to do good. So let us
determine, by God’s grace, to do good to one and all. Let us
love those who hate us, bless those who curse us and pray for
the forgiveness of those who persecute us. Then no-one will
be able to harm us. Satan and his agents may cheat us.,
trouble us, harass us, rob us, injure us, imprison us and even
kill our bodies. But they will not be able to harm us spiritually.
God is , and always will be on the throne. Jesus has all
authority in heaven and on earth. And Satan has been
defeated once-for-all on Calvary’s cross. Satan does not have
to be defeated once again by us. We only have to believe in
our hearts and confess with our mouths that Satan has been
defeated on the cross and that he has no power over us any
more. Satan cannot discourage us or depress us or frighten
us with anything, as long as we hold fast to this confession.
We can overcome Satan by the word of our testimony against
him (Rev 12:11)

The certainty of the Lord being with us.

The Lord will never leave us nor forsake us. He won’t leave us
even when we slip up and fall. He only wants us to be honest
with Him about our failures. The Lord is near to the broken-
hearted. The promise in Psalm 37:23(LB) is that even when
we fall, our fall won’t be fatal, because the Lord will hold us
with His Hand. He will not only make the evil that others do
to us to work for our good., He will also make our own failures
to work together for our good. He will make all things work
together for our very best. The Lord will deliver us from every
evil and bring us through triumphantly. He will keep us from
falling and present us perfect to the Father one day. Our
confidence is in His ability to keep us until the end and not in
our own ability to endure until the end. So we look to the
future with great boldness and confidence. Let us run the race
looking away from everything else, unto Jesus(Heb 12:2). May
we never keep looking at either our present weaknesses or
our past failures. True humility is to acknowledge that nothing
good dwells in us (Romans 7:18). If nothing good dwells
inside us, then why do we look inside ourselves at all? Let us
also stop looking at our past failures. That will only
discourage us. We must make a firm decision now, to forget
the past and press on to the future. Let us look at Jesus
alone. He will make us an overcomer, no matter how weak we
are today and no matter how much we have failed in the past.
Hallelujah!. Amen

ZP

Carnal Christians

2007-08-07T00:34:00.000-06:00

1 Corinthians 3: 1.—And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.

The apostle here speaks of two stages of the Christian life, two types of Christians: "I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ." They were Christians, in Christ, but instead of being spiritual Christians, they were carnal. "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet are ye able, for ye are yet carnal." Here is that word a second time. "For whereas"—this is the proof—"there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal?" Four times the apostle uses that word carnal. In the wisdom which the Holy Ghost gives him, Paul feels:—I can not write to these Corinthian Christians unless I know their state, and unless I tell them of it. If I give spiritual food to men who are carnal Christians, I am doing them more harm than good, for they are not fit to take it. I cannot feed them with meat, I must feed them with milk. And so he tells them at the very outset of the epistle what he sees to be their state. In the two previous chapters he had spoken about his ministry being by the Holy Spirit; now he begins to tell them what must be the state of a people in order to accept spiritual truth, and he says: "I have not liberty to speak to you as I would, for you are carnal, and you cannot receive Spiritual truth." That suggests to us the solemn thought, that in the Church of Christ there are two classes of Christians. Some have lived many years as believers, and yet always remain babes; others are spiritual men, because they have given themselves up to the power, the leading and to the entire rule of the Holy Ghost. If we are to obtain a blessing, we must first decide to which of these classes we belong. Are we, by the grace of God, in deep humility living a spiritual life, or are we living a carnal life? Then, let us first try to understand what is meant by the carnal state in which believers may be living.

We notice from what we find in Corinthians, four marks of the carnal state. First: It is simply a condition of protracted infancy. You know what that means. Suppose a beautiful babe, six months old. It cannot speak, it cannot walk, but we do not trouble ourselves about that; it is natural, and ought to be so. But suppose a year later we find the child not grown at all, and three years later still no growth; we would at once say: "There must be some terrible disease;" and the baby that at six months old was the cause of joy to every one who saw him, has become to the mother and to all a source of anxiety and sorrow. There is something wrong; the child can not grow. It was quite right at six months old that it should eat nothing but milk; but years have passed by, and it remains in the same weakly state. Now this is just the condition of many believers. They are converted; they know what it is to have assurance and faith; they believe in pardon for sin; they begin to work for God; and yet, somehow, there is very little growth in spirituality, in the real heavenly life. We come into contact with them, and we feel at once there is something wanting; there is none of the beauty of holiness or of the power of God's Spirit in them. This is the condition of the carnal Corinthians, expressed in what was said to the Hebrews: "You have had the Gospel so long that by this time you ought to be teachers, and yet you need that men should teach you the very rudiments of the oracles of God." Is it not a sad thing to see a believer who has been converted five, ten, twenty years, and yet no growth, and no strength, and no joy of holiness?

What are the marks of a little child? One is, a little child cannot help himself, but is always keeping others occupied to serve him. What a tyrant a baby in a house often is! The mother cannot go out, there must be a servant to nurse it; it needs to be cared for constantly. God made a man to care for others, but the baby was made to be cared for and to be helped. So there are Christians who always want help. Their pastor and their Christian friends must always be teaching and comforting them. They go to church, and to prayer-meetings, and to conventions, always wanting to be helped,—a sign of spiritual infancy.

The other sign of an infant is this: he can do nothing to help his fellow-man. Every man is expected to contribute something to the welfare of society; every one has a place to fill and a work to do, but the babe can do nothing for the common weal. It is just so with Christians. How little some can do! They take a part in work, as it is called, but there is little of exercising spiritual power and carrying real blessing. Should we not each ask, "Have I outgrown my spiritual infancy?" Some must reply, "No, instead of having gone forward, I have gone backward, and the joy of conversion and the first love is gone." Alas! They are babes in Christ; they are yet carnal.

The second mark of the carnal state is this: that there is sin and failure continually. Paul says: "Whereas there is strife and division among you, and envying, are ye not carnal?" A man gives way to temper. He may be a minister, or a preacher of the Gospel, or a Sunday-school teacher, most earnest at the prayer-meeting, but yet strife or bitterness or envying is often shown by him. Alas! Alas! In Gal. 3:5 we are told that the works of the flesh are specially hatred and envy. How often among Christians, who have to work together, do we see divisions and bitterness! God have mercy upon them, that the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, is so frequently absent from His own people. You ask, "Why is it, that for twenty years I have been fighting with my temper, and can not conquer it?" It is because you have been fighting with the temper, and you have not been fighting with the root of the temper. You have not seen that it is all because you are in the carnal state, and not properly given up to the Spirit of God. It may be that you never were taught it; that you never saw it in God's Word; that you never believed it. But there it is; the truth of God remains unchangeable. Jesus Christ can give us the victory over sin, and can keep us from actual transgression. I am not telling you that the root of sin will be eradicated, and that you will have no longer any natural tendency to sin; but when the Holy Spirit comes not only with His power for service as a gift, but when He comes in Divine grace to fill the heart, there is victory over sin; power not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And you see a mark of the carnal state not only in unlovingness, self-consciousness and bitterness, but in so many other sins. How much worldliness, how much ambition among men, how much seeking for the honor that comes from man—all the fruit of the carnal life—to be found in the midst of Christian activity! Let us remember that the carnal state is a state of continual sinning and failure, and God wants us not only to make confession of individual sins, but to come to the acknowledgment that they are the sign that we are not living a healthy life,—we are yet carnal.

A third mark which will explain further what I have been saying, is that this carnal state may be found in existence in connection with great spiritual gifts. There is a difference between gifts and graces. The graces of the Spirit are humility and love, like the humility and love of Christ. The graces of the Spirit are to make a man free from self; the gifts of the Spirit are to fit a man for work. We see this illustrated among the Corinthians. In the first chapter Paul says, "I thank God that you are enriched unto all utterance, and all knowledge, and all wisdom." In the 12th and 14th chapters we see that the gifts of prophecy and of working miracles were in great power among them; but the graces of the Spirit were noticeably absent.

And this may be in our days as well as in the time of the Corinthians. I may be a minister of the Gospel; I may teach God's Word beautifully; I may have influence, and gather a large congregation, and yet, alas! I may be a carnal man; a man who may be used by God, and may be a blessing to others, and yet the carnal life may still mark me. You all know the law that a thing is named according to what is its most prominent characteristic. Now, in these carnal Corinthians there was a little of God's Spirit, but the flesh predominated; the Spirit had not the rule of their whole life. And the spiritual men are not called so because there is no flesh in them, but because the Spirit in them has obtained dominance, and when you meet them and have intercourse with them, you feel that the Spirit of God has sanctified them. Ah, let us beware lest the blessing God gives us in our work deceive us and lead us to think that because he has blessed us, we must be spiritual men. God may give us gifts that we use, and yet our lives may not be wholly in the power of the Holy Ghost.

My last mark of the carnal state is that it makes a man unfit for receiving spiritual truths. That is what the apostle writes to the Corinthians: "I could not preach to you as unto spiritual; you are not fit for spiritual truth after being Christians so long; you can not yet bear it; I have to feed you with milk." I am afraid that in the church of the nineteenth century we often make a terrible mistake. We have a congregation in which the majority are carnal men. We give these men spiritual teaching, and they admire it, understand it, and rejoice in such ministry; yet their lives are not practically affected. They work for Christ in a certain way, but we can scarce recognize the true sanctification of the Spirit; we dare not say they are spiritual men, full of the Holy Spirit.

Now, let us recognize this with regard to ourselves. A man may become very earnest, may take in all the teaching he hears; he may be able to discern, for discernment is a gift; he may say, "That man helps me in this line, and that man in another direction, and a third man is remarkable for another gift;" yet, all the time, the carnal life may be living strongly in him, and when he gets into trouble with some friend, or Christian worker, or worldly man, the carnal root is bearing its terrible fruit, and the spiritual food has failed to enter his heart. Beware of that. Mark the Corinthians and learn of them. Paul did not say to them, "You can not bear the truth as I would speak it to you," because they were ignorant or a stupid people. The Corinthians prided themselves on their wisdom, and sought it above everything, and Paul said: "I thank God that you are enriched in utterance, in knowledge, and in wisdom; nevertheless, you are yet carnal, your life is not holy; your life is not sanctified unto the humility of the life of the Lamb of God, you can not yet take in real spiritual truth."

We find the carnal state not only at Corinth, but throughout the Christian world to-day. Many Christians are asking, "What is the reason there is so much feebleness in the Church?" We can not ask this question too earnestly, and I trust that God Himself will so impress it upon our hearts that we shall say to Him, "It must be changed. Have mercy upon us." But, ah! that prayer and that change can not come until we have begun to see that there is a carnal root ruling in believers; they are living more after the flesh than the Spirit; they are yet carnal Christians.

There is a passage "from carnal to spiritual." Did Paul find any spiritual believers? Undoubtedly he did. Just read the 6th chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians! That was a church where strife, and bitterness, and envy were terrible. But the apostle says in the first verse: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness." There we see that the marks of the spiritual man are that he will be a meek man; and that he will have power, and love to help and restore those that are fallen. The carnal man can not do that. If there is a true spiritual life that can be lived, the great question is: Is the way open, and how can I enter into the spiritual state? Here, again, I have four short answers.

First, we must know that there is such a spiritual life to be lived by men on earth. Nothing cuts the roots of the Christian life so much as unbelief. People do not believe what God has said about what He is willing to do for His children. Men do not believe that when God says, "Be filled with the Spirit," He means it for every Christian. And yet Paul wrote to the Ephesians each one: "Be filled with the Spirit, and do not be drunk with wine." Just as little as you may be drunk with wine, so little may you live without being filled with the Spirit. Now, if God means that for believers, the first thing that we need is to study, and to take home God's Word, to our belief until our hearts are filled with the assurance that there is such a life possible which it is our duty to live; that we can be spiritual men. God's Word teaches us that God does not expect a man to live as he ought for one minute unless the Holy Spirit is in him to enable him to do it.

We do not want the Holy Spirit only when we go to preach, or when we have some special temptation of the devil to meet, or some great burden to bear; God says: "My child can not live a right life unless he is guided by my Spirit every minute." That is the mark of the child of God: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." In Romans V. we read: "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given unto us." That is to be the common, every-day experience of the believer, not his life at set times only. Did ever a father or mother think, "For to-day I want my child to love me?" No, they expect the love every day. And so God wants His child every moment to have a heart filled with love of the Spirit. In the eyes of God, it is most unnatural to expect a man to love as he should if he is not filled with the Spirit. Oh, let us believe a man can be a spiritual man. Thank God, there is now the blessing waiting us. "Be filled with the Spirit." "Be led by the Spirit." There is the blessing. If you have to say, "Oh, God, I have not this blessing," say it; but say also, "Lord, I know it is my duty, my solemn obligation to have it, for without it I can not live in perfect peace with Thee all the day; without it I can not glorify Thee, and do the work Thou wouldst have me do." This is our first step from carnal to spiritual,—to recognize a spiritual life, a walk in the Spirit, is within our reach. How can we ask God to guide us into spiritual life, if we have not a clear, confident conviction that there is such a life to be had?

Then comes the second step; a man must see the shame and guilt of his having lived such a life. Some people admit there is a spiritual life to live, and that they have not lived it, and they are sorry for themselves, and pity themselves, and think, "How sad that I am too feeble for it! How sad that God gives it to others, but has not given it to me!" They have great compassion upon themselves, instead of saying, "Alas! it has been our unfaithfulness, our unbelief, our disobedience, that has kept us from giving ourselves utterly to God. We have to blush and to be ashamed before God that we do not live as spiritual men."

A man does not get converted without having conviction of sin. When that conviction of sin comes, and his eyes are opened, he learns to be afraid of his sin, and to flee from it to Christ, and to accept Christ as a mighty deliverer. But a man needs a second conviction of sin; a believer must be convicted of his peculiar sin. The sins of an unconverted man are different from the sins of a believer. An unconverted man, for instance, is not ordinarily convicted of the corruption of his nature; he thinks principally about external sins,—"I have sworn, been a liar, and I am on the way to hell." He is then convicted for conversion. But the believer is in quite a different condition. His sins are far more blamable, for he has had the light and the love and the Spirit of God given to him. His sins are far deeper. He has striven to conquer them and he has grown to see that his nature is utterly corrupt, that the carnal mind, the flesh, within him, is making his whole state utterly wretched. When a believer is thus convicted by the Holy Spirit, it is specially his life of unbelief that condemns him, because he sees that the great guilt connected with this has kept him from receiving the full gift of God's Holy Spirit. He is brought down in shame and confusion of face, and he begins to cry: "Woe is me, for I am undone. I have heard of God by the hearing of the ear; I have known a great deal of Him and preached about Him, but now mine eye seeth Him." God comes near him. Job, the righteous man, whom God trusted, saw in himself the deep sin of self and its righteousness that he had never seen before. Until this conviction of the wrongness of our carnal state as believers comes to each one of us; until we are willing to get this conviction from God, to take time before God to be humbled and convicted, we never can become spiritual men.

Then comes the third mark, which is that out of the carnal state into the spiritual is only one step. One step; oh, that is a blessed message I bring to you—it is only one step. I know many people will refuse to admit that it is only one step; they think it too little for such a mighty change. But was not conversion only one step?

So it is when a man passes from carnal to spiritual. You ask if when I talk of a spiritual man I am not thinking of a man of spiritual maturity, a real saint, and you say: "Does that come in one day? Is there no growth in holiness?" I reply that spiritual maturity cannot come in a day. We can not expect it. It takes growth, until the whole beauty of the image of Christ is formed in a man. But still I say that it needs but one step for a man to get out of the carnal life into the spiritual life. It is when a man utterly breaks with the flesh; when he gives up the flesh into the crucifixion death of Christ; when he sees that everything about it is accursed and that he can not deliver himself from it; and then claims the slaying power of Christ's cross within him,—it is when a man does this and says: "This spiritual life prepared for me is the free gift of my God in Christ Jesus," that he understands how one step can bring him out of the carnal into the spiritual state.

In that spiritual life there will be much still to be learned. There will still be imperfections. Spiritual life is not perfect; but the predominant characteristic will be spiritual. When a man has given himself up to the real, living, acting, ruling power of God's Spirit, he has got into the right position in which he can grow. You never think of growing out of sickness into health; you may grow out of feebleness into strength, as the little babe can grow to be a strong man; but where there is disease, there must healing come if there is to be a cure effected. There are Christians who think that they must grow out of the carnal state into the spiritual state. You never can. What could help those carnal Corinthians? To give them milk could not help them, for milk was a proof they were in the wrong state. To give them meat would not help them, for they were unfit to eat it. What they needed was the knife of the surgeon. Paul says that the carnal life must be cut out. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh." When a man understands what that means, and accepts it in the faith of what Christ can do, then one step can bring him from carnal to spiritual. One simple act of faith in the power of Christ's death, one act of surrender to the fellowship of Christ's death as the Holy Spirit can make it ours, will make it ours, will bring deliverance from the power of your efforts.

What brought deliverance to that poor condemned sinner who was most dark and wretched in his unconverted state? He felt he could do nothing good of himself. What did he do? He saw set before him the almighty Saviour and he cast himself into His arms; he trusted himself to that omnipotent love and cried, "Lord, have mercy upon me." That was salvation. It was not for what he did that Christ accepted him. Oh, believers, if any of us who are conscious that the carnal state predominates have to say: "It marks me; I am a religious man, an earnest man, a friend of missions; I work for Christ in my church, but, alas! temper and sin and worldliness have still the mastery over my soul," hear the word of God. If any will come and say: "I have struggled, I have prayed, I have wept, and it has not helped me," then you must do one other thing. You must see that the living Christ is God's provision for your holy, spiritual life. You must believe that that Christ who accepted you once, at conversion, in His wonderful love is now waiting to say to you that you may become a spiritual man, entirely given up to God. If you will believe that, your fear will vanish and you will say: "It can be done; if Christ will accept and take charge, it shall be done."

Then, my last mark. A man must take that step, a solemn but blessed step. It cost some of you five or ten years before you took the step of conversion. You wept and prayed for years, and could not find peace until you took that step. So, in the spiritual life, you may go to teacher after teacher, and say, "Tell me about the spiritual life, the baptism of the Spirit, and holiness," and yet you may remain just where you were. Many of us would love to have sin taken away. Who loves to have a hasty temper? Who loves to have a proud disposition? Who loves to have a worldly heart? No one. We go to Christ to take it away, and he does not do it; and we ask, "Why will he not do it? I have prayed very earnestly." It is because you wanted Him to take away the ugly fruits while the poisonous root was to stay in you. You did not ask Him that the flesh should be nailed to His cross, and that you should henceforth give up self entirely to the power of His Spirit.

There is deliverance, but not in the way we seek it. Suppose a painter had a piece of canvas, on which he desired to work out some beautiful picture. Suppose that piece of canvas does not belong to him, and any one has a right to take it and to use it for any other purpose; do you think the painter would bestow much work on that? No. Yet people want Jesus Christ to bestow His trouble upon them in taking away this temper, or that other sin, though in their hearts they have not yielded themselves utterly to His command and His keeping. It can not be. But if you will come and give your whole life into His charge, Christ Jesus is mighty to save; Christ Jesus waits to be gracious; Christ Jesus waits to fill you with His Spirit.

Will you not take the step? God grant that we may be led by His Spirit to a yielding up of ourselves to Him as never before. Will you not come in humble confession that, alas! the carnal life has predominated too much, has altogether marked you, and that you have a bitter consciousness that with all the blessing God has bestowed, He has not made you what you want to be—a spiritual man? It is the Holy Spirit alone who by His indwelling can make a spiritual man. Come then and cast yourself at God's feet, with this one thought, "Lord, I give myself an empty vessel to be filled with Thy Spirit." Each one of you sees every day at the tea table an empty cup set there, waiting to be filled with tea when the proper time comes. So with every dish, every plate. They are cleansed and empty, ready to be filled. Emptied and cleansed. Oh, come! and just as a vessel is set apart to receive what it is to contain, say to Christ that you desire from this hour to be a vessel set apart to be filled with His Spirit, given up to be a spiritual man. Bow down in the deepest emptiness of soul, and say, "Oh, God, I have nothing!" and then surely as you place yourself before Him you have a right to say, "My God will fulfill His promise! I claim from Him the filling of the Holy Spirit to make me, instead of a carnal, a spiritual Christian." If you place yourself at His feet, and tarry there; if you abide in that humble surrender and that childlike trust, as sure as God lives the blessing will come.

Oh, have we not to bow in shame before God, as we think of His whole Church and see so much of the carnal prevailing? Have we not to bow in shame before God, as we think of so much of the carnal in our hearts and lives? Then let us bow in great faith in God's mercy. Deliverance is nigh, deliverance is coming, deliverance is waiting, deliverance is sure. Let us trust; God will give it.

Are you discouraged?

2007-08-01T14:56:00.000-06:00

Satan is the author of all discouragement.

If we have turned from our sins to God, believed in the finished work
of the Lord Jesus and have called on him as Lord & savior, then God is our heavenly father. He is always on our side against sin and the devil.

Let's cast our burdens at his feet and trust him to take care of us. Phil. 4:6

There is a wonderful hymn that comes to mind.

Who can cheer the heart like Jesus, here it is.

Who can cheer the heart like Je-sus,

By His pres-ence all di-vine?

True and ten-der, pure and pre-cious,

O how blest to call Him mine!

chorus

All that thrills my soul is Je-sus;

He is more than life to me;

And the fair-est of ten thou-sand,

In my bless-ed Lord I see.

verse 2

Love of Christ so freely given,
Grace of God beyond degree,
Mercy higher than the heaven,
Deeper than the deepest sea.

verse 3

What a wonderful redemption!
Never can a mortal know
How my sin, tho' red like crimson,
Can be whiter than the snow.

verse 4

Ev'ry need His hand supplying,
Ev'ry good in Him I see;
On His strength divine relying,
He is all in all to me.

verse 5

By the crystal flowing river
With the ransomed I will sing,
And forever and forever
Praise and glorify the King.

Here are some verses, that have encouraged me.

God is telling you "I've never quit loving you and never will.
Expect love, love, and more love!
And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again, Jer. 31:3 (free paraphrase of message)

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jer. 29:11

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. Isaiah 41:10

May God bless you!

The new wine

2007-07-30T14:57:00.000-06:00

At the marriage in Cana, where Jesus was present, the
old wine ran out. The old wine was made with human
effort, over a period of many years - but it could not meet
the need. This is a parable of life under the law - the old
covenant. The old wine runs out; and the Lord has to wait
until it runs out before He can give us the new wine. "For
the Lord God says: Only in waiting for Me will you be
saved. ... but you say, We will get our help from Egypt
(human strength)! So you will be chased by your enemies.
.. And the Lord is waiting for you (to come to an end of
yourself) and to come to Him, so that He can show you
His love; He will conquer you to bless you. ... Blessed are
all those who wait for Him to help them'' (Isa. 30:15-18
Living Bible). When we have tried and tried and tried to live
in victory and failed repeatedly, this is the lesson that God
is trying to teach us: "You cannot have victory in your own
strength." As long as you are under the law, you will be
ruled by sin. The chief work that God seeks to do in each
of His children is to break down the strength of self totally.
Jesus waited for the old wine to run out, at Cana, before
He did His miracle. He is waiting now for our strength to
come to an end. All our failures and defeats are meant by
God to bring us to the end, for He can manifest His power
perfectly only in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). We can see
the strength of self in the moments of temptation and
provocation, when we react with bitter words, angry
expressions, self-justification, criticism and judgment of
others, unforgiving attitudes, a grabbing-love for material
things, fighting for our rights and our reputation, seeking
vengeance etc. These and other similar attitudes show
how strong self still is in us - the old wine has not yet run
out; and Jesus waits on the sidelines doing nothing for us.

If only we allow God to break us, if only we would humble
ourselves and gladly accept death to our rights and
reputation, how quickly He could lead us into life under
the new covenant! All the trying circumstances,
frustrations and disappointments, heartaches etc, that we
go through are meant by God to bring the strength of our
self down to zero. This was how God dealt with Job.
Finally Job reached that zero-point where lying on his face
in the dust, he said, "Lord, I am nothing. (I am zero.) ... I
lay my hand upon my mouth in silence. ... I had only
heard about you (second-hand) before, but now I have
seen you and I loathe myself and repent in dust and
ashes'' (Job 40:4;42:5,6). This is what happens when God
has finally broken us and given us a revelation of Himself.
The same Moses, who once thought himself to be so
capable (at the age of 40), when broken by the vision of
God (40 years later) says, "Lord, I can't speak. Send
someone else" (Ex. 4:10,13). The same thing happened
to the great prophet Isaiah when he saw God's glory. He
said, "My doom is sealed, for I am a foul-mouthed sinner"
(Isa. 6:5). Daniel says that when he saw the vision the
Lord gave Him, that his strength left him. He came to a
zero-point (Dan. 10:8). When the Spirit-filled apostle John,
after having walked with God for 65 years, saw Jesus on
the isle of Patmos, he fell at His feet as a dead man (Rev.
1:17). Such has always been the experience of all who
have seen the glory of the Lord! Their face is in the dust
and their mouth is shut. When God can bring us to that
place, it is but a quick task for Him to give us the new
wine, the life of Jesus, the divine nature, the pre-eminent
blessing of the new covenant sealed through the blood of
Jesus. Oh that we might all come there quickly and live in
that place - with our face in the dust before God - all our
days! For there is a development in this life from light to
light (Prov. 4:18), from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). John
speaks of "Walking in the light" (1 Jn. 1:7). There is no
standing in the light, but rather a walking - a progression
closer and closer to Him in whom there is no darkness at
all. Thus the light shines brighter and brighter upon us and
we become more and more conscious of the hidden sins
that lurk in our flesh, which we were not aware of in earlier
days; and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all those
sins.

Thus it is, that the closer we come to the Lord, the more
aware we become of sin in our own flesh, and less and
less of the sin in others around us. We no longer desire to
throw stones at the woman caught in adultery, for we are
aware in Jesus' presence, of the sin in our own flesh, and
we cry out, "O wretched man that I am", rather than "O
wretched woman that she is" (Rom. 7:24). Adam pointed
a finger at his wife, even while standing before God (Gen.
3:12). But the Lord made him aware of his own sin (3:17).
This is what the Lord will do for us too. And this is really
the test of whether we have just a religion and some
doctrines or whether we are living before the face of God
Himself. Has the wine run out in our personal life, our
married life or our assembly life? Then it is about time that
we sought the Lord's face and acknowledged our need
honestly. He alone can give us the new wine! The new
wine in Cana was not produced by human effort. It was
the supernatural work of God. So too can it be in our life.
He will write His laws in our heart and mind, making us to
will and to do His perfect will (Heb. 8:10; Phil. 2:13). He
will circumcise our hearts to love Him and cause us to
walk in His commandments (Deut. 30:6; Ezek. 36:27).
This will be as much His work as the new wine produced
in Cana was His work. This is the meaning of grace. We
cannot produce the life of Jesus - even if we try for a
lifetime. But if we bear in our body "the dying of Jesus"
(the taking up of the cross each day, the dying to our ego,
our self-will and our rights and reputation), God promises
to produce the new wine of the life of Jesus in us (2 Cor.
4:10). We are to run this race looking unto Jesus,
comparing ourselves with Him alone, all the time. Thus
alone will there be a constant cry from our hearts, "O
wretched man that I am" - for we shall be constantly
aware of how unlike Jesus we are, even when we have
come to a life of victory over conscious sin. "Those who
compare themselves with other believers are spiritual
idiots" (2 Cor. 10:12) for that is the surest way to spiritual
pride and a hundred-and-one other evils. We can never be
in danger of spiritual pride as long as our eyes are fixed
on Jesus and we compare ourselves with Him constantly.
The Holy Spirit shows us the glory of Jesus in the mirror
of God's word and then only can He conform us to that
likeness (2 Cor. 3:18). Paul said that he had only one goal
that he pressed on towards - not the conversion of the
lost, but "the upward call of God (to become like) Christ
Jesus" (Phil. 3:13,14). And then he said, "Let us who are
perfect (in our conscience, living in victory over conscious
sin) have this same attitude (of pressing on towards total
perfection, total likeness to Jesus)" (Phil. 3:15). This is
the mark of the spiritually mature Christian. Service for
God, evangelism etc, - all take a secondary place to this
goal, in the life of the mature man of God.

John also tells us that it is through such a walking in the
light of God that we can have fellowship with one another
(1 Jn. 1:7) - not only fellowship with God, but also
fellowship with other believers in perfect unity. The reason
for this is very simple. The one who is walking in the light
of God, living before God's face, will always be aware of
his own shortcomings and will be living in a constant self-
judgment, and will not have anything to accuse other
brothers of. Thus there can never be any strife between
any two brothers who are walking in this pathway. This is
the narrow way to life that, Jesus said, few find (Matt.
7:14). Judgment begins at the house of God even for the
righteous, because in God's house, God dwells in
unapproachable light (1 Pet. 4:17,18; 1 Tim. 6:6). "Who
can live with the consuming fire? ... He who walks
righteously (facing up to the truth concerning himself)"
(Isa. 33:14,15). This was the sin of the leader in the
church at Laodicea that he did not live in this constant
self- judgment (and it is easy to slip into that error when
you become a leader) and thus did not know that he was
'wretched' (Rev. 3:17). May we so live before God's face all
our days, so that we live in constant brokenness and
constant self-judgment crying out "O wretched man that I
am". Thus even when we reach the heights of holiness
that a saved sinner can reach on earth, we shall still say
(sincerely and honestly, without any false humility) "I am
the very least of all the believers. ... I am the chief of
sinners" (Eph. 3:8; 1Tim. 1:15). Thus we shall have a
fellowship with other believers who walk the same way
and gradually our mutual fellowship will become more and
more like the fellowship that the Father and the Son have
with each other (Jn. 17:21). This is the new wine Jesus
desires to give us.

ZP

The Bible in 50 words

2007-07-25T14:00:00.000-06:00

God made
Adam bit
Noah arked
Abraham split
Joseph ruled
Jacob fooled
Bush talked
Moses balked
Pharaoh plagued
People walked
Sea divided
Tablets guided
Promise landed
Saul freaked
David peeked
Prophets warned
Jesus born
God walked
Love talked
Anger crucified
Hope died
Love rose
Spirit flamed
Word spread
God remained.

-- Author Unknown

Satan's convention

2007-07-21T14:42:00.000-06:00

Satan called a worldwide convention.

In his opening address to his evil angels, he said, "We can't keep the Christians from assembling with the church. We cannot keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth. We cannot even keep them from forming an intimate, abiding relationship experience in Christ. Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken.

So let them go to their churches; let them have their conservative lifestyles, but steal their time, so they can't gain that relationship with Jesus Christ. This is what I want you to do, angels. Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!" "How shall we do this?" shouted his angels. "Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent innumerable schemes! To occupy their minds," he answered. "Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow. Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a day, so they can afford their empty lifestyles.

Keep them from spending time with their children. As their family fragments, soon, their home will offer no escape from the pressures of work!" Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice. Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive. To keep the TV, VCR, CDs and their PCs going constantly in their home and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ." "Fill the coffee tables with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards. Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order catalogs, sweepstakes, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering free products, services, and false hopes. Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines so their husbands will believe that external beauty is what's important, and they'll become dissatisfied with their wives. That will fragment those families quickly!" "Even in their recreation, let them be excessive. Have them return from their recreation exhausted, disquieted and unprepared for the coming week. Don't let them go out in nature to reflect on God's wonders. Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, concerts and movies instead."

Keep them busy, busy, busy!

And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences and unsettled emotions. Go ahead, let them be involved in soul winning; but crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Jesus. Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause. It will work! It was quite a convention. The evil angels went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to get more busy and more rushed, going here and there.

I guess the question is: Has the devil been successful at his scheme? You be the judge! Does "busy" mean:

B-eing
U-nder
S-atan's
Y-oke?

Are we too BUSY?!

Search me O God

2007-07-18T13:49:00.000-06:00

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit or stand. When far away you know my every thought. You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment, you know where I am...

I can never be lost to your Spirit! I can never get away from my God! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, your strength will support me...

You made the delicate inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is so amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous and how well I know it. You were there while I was formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book!

How precious it is Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can't even count how many times a day your thoughts turn towards me. And when I awaken in the morning you are still thinking of me!..
Search me O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts. Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Psalm 139

Quotes by Sadhu Sundar Singh

2007-07-14T00:40:00.000-06:00

"He was searching for me before I sought Him. Christ whom I had never expected came to me. I was praying, 'If there be a God, reveal Thyself'...I was praying to Hindu gods and incarnations. But when He came there was no anger in His face, even though I had burnt the Bible three days before. None of you have ever destroyed Scripture like me. He is such a wonderful, loving, living Saviour..."

"There is a great difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Him... If we only know of Jesus as a good man, a great example, it is no help to us. Those who know Him know Who He is. When we know Him everything is different and we are living in a new world -- a new atmosphere. Heaven begins on earth for us. Those who know Him know that Jesus is everything to them. They can bear witness because they have been living with Him...If we live in Him He will reveal Himself to us and we shall bear witness -- not for a day or a night only..."

"For the first two or three years after my conversion, I used to ask for specific things. Now I ask for God. Supposing there is a tree full of fruits -- you will have to go and buy or beg the fruits from the owner of the tree. Every day you would have to go for one or two fruits. But if you can make the tree your own property, then all the fruits will be your own. In the same way, if God is your own, then all things in Heaven and on earth will be your own, because He is your Father and is everything to you; otherwise you will have to go and ask like a beggar for certain things. When they are used up, you will have to ask again. So ask not for gifts but for the Giver of Gifts: not for life but for the Giver of Life -- then life and the things needed for life will be added unto you."

"Salt, when dissolved in water, may disappear, but it does not cease to exist. We can be sure of its presence by tasting the water. Likewise, the indwelling Christ, though unseen, will be made evident to others from the love which he imparts to us."

"From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross."

"While sitting on the bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity; they live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in men's hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism."

"When Jesus entered Jerusalem the people spread their clothes in the way and strewed branches before Him in order to do Him honour. Jesus rode upon an ass, according to the word of the prophet. His feet did not touch the road which was decorated in His honour. It was the ass which trod upon the garments and the branches. But the ass would have been very foolish to have been uplifted on that account; for the road really was not decked in its honour! It would be just as foolish if those who bear Christ to men were to think anything of themselves because of what men do to them for the sake of Jesus."

"A newborn child has to cry, for only in this way will his lungs expand. A doctor once told me of a child who could not breathe when it was born. In order to make it breathe the doctor gave it a slight blow. The mother must have thought the doctor cruel. But he was really doing the kindest thing possible. As with newborn children the lungs are contracted, so are our spiritual lungs. But through suffering God strikes us in love. Then our lungs expand and we can breathe and pray."

"Just as the salt water of the sea is drawn upwards by the hot rays of the sun, and gradually takes on the form of clouds, and, turned thus into sweet and refreshing water, falls in showers on the earth (for the sea water as it rises upwards leaves behind it its salt and bitterness), so when the thoughts and desires of the man of prayer rise aloft like misty emanations of the soul, the rays of the Sun of Righteousness purify them of all sinful taint, and his prayers become a great cloud which descends from heaven in a shower of blessing, bringing refreshment to many on the earth."

"Many people despise those who spend their health, strength and money for the salvation of others, and call them mad. And yet it is they who will save many and be saved themselves."

"From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls."

"God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If God were as wrathful, the world would have been a heap of ruins long ago."

"Should I worship Him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve Him from desire of gaining heaven, may He keep me out. But should I worship Him from love alone, He reveal Himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with His love and presence."

"From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls."

"God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If God were as wrathful, the world would have been a heap of ruins long ago."

Jesus Christ

Costa Concordia

God wants to help us

Faith

Jesus is coming quickly

In the beginning God

How blessed~

Are you worried?

Jesus is Lord!

The times

Faith

Faith

John 3:16

The Power of God

Great is the lord!

Strong

cherish~

Faith

Please pray for the persecuted church

Turn to him

Jesus is coming again!

humble

don't worry

depend on God

the free offer of mercy

continue

faith without works is dead

God is for you!

David Brainerd - a man of God~

this is my fathers world

Only the Bible~

Pastor charged - persecution

God is seeking true worshippers

I surrender all

He Giveth More Grace

Problems

The reward

For Christ

True Religion IS Not Feeling but Willing

All things

Facing the Infinite God

God's love~

`*~~*~*~~*~~~~Happy Mother's day!!~~*

Following Christ

Directions to his house

Jesus loves you

the story of reading the bible

God is good!

Godliness

quote

arise

The best gifts this season

Jesus is awesome

Who's Your Daddy - Ben Hooper story

you are blessed

something to say - Mathew west

Deception and counterfiet revival

You saved the day!

God's kindness

My God, How Wonderful Thou Are

Give me Jesus~

Hallellujah Jesus, Monk & Neagle

Jesus is Lord

a radical conversion

Is God your Lawyer?

Don't let me miss the glory

How many kings

Father's love letter

God is our refuge~

I surrender all

God's bigger than that

A 12 year old with a brush

I can only imagine

The books of the bible

Pray for Christians in North Korea

Rose of Sharon: An Irish Hymn

Love of God~

Great is his faithfulness

Martyrs for the Lord

let there be light

`~~~**Happy Mother's day!!*