Chip Brogden: A One Sided Love?

Chip Brogden Shares:

As “advanced” as our Western culture seems to be, this kind of one-way, egocentric, “what can I get out of it” relationship is not too unlike the relationship that pagans and heathens have with their animistic gods and idols. They keep their gods appeased, not because they love them, but because they have some self-serving need they want met, whether it is health, prosperity, rain, or protection from their enemies. How is this much different than the Gospel according to Churchianity?

Accused of Being A Spiritual Snob

Have you ever wrestled with the accusation of being a spiritual snob?  How about being accused of being unsociable or acting like some kind of 'good two shoes?'  Well, here is the real question I want to put across to you so that you can ask yourself where the source of those questions come from?  Are they an honest rebuke?  Or is it an accusation?

Consider this:  When your child was very young, (if you do not have children, pretend you do for this illustration  :)  ) did you want the best for your child?  Were you picky who they played with?  How about in the first year of school, did you want your child to choose a friend from a stable environment or was it okay to let your little one hang around an unruly and rebellious kid that lacked any discipline from home?

And when your child started reaching the dating years, were you picky who the date could be?  Did you watch over things like making sure your child hung out with other that would influence your child in a good way?  Or did you just figure your child should make his/her own decision and stay the course of all the years you've invested to make a good life for themselves and their future families.  Most likely not.  Most likely the moment you saw your teenager beginning to hang out with other teenagers you thought were involved with drugs or something, you put your foot down.  

So, let me share this with you... Do you think your Heavenly Father is less than a good parent you are?  Wouldn't He want the best for you?  Wouldn't He want you to have the best friends with the best influence?

​ So, I ask you... if you are being accused of being a spiritual snob.. is it true?  or are you pursuing the best and rejecting bad and hindering influences? 

Just asking ... this is something You have to answer.  ​

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Entering the Covenant: My First Step

Entering the Covenant:  My First Step By putting everything you are and everything you have at the cross of Jesus. By gathering up everything you love, like, or desire and putting them at the Throne of God Almighty and leaving them there. He may give them back, or He may keep them for a season, or He may keep them there forever. But if you really want to enter into a real covenant with God, then this is where you begin. Don’t rush into this. Jesus said that men must consider the cost first. Read about the covenant. Find out what other people have to say about it, And I mean those people that you respect in the Lord and

Rick Renner: Bless Those That Curse You (Example)

...So rather than get upset with the unbeliever who wrote that ugly article, I felt instructed of the Lord to start speaking blessings into her life. I realized that this journalist wrote that kind of article because she was lost and needed the Lord. So what good would it do if I allowed myself to speak curses over her life? It was time for me to rise to the occasion by deciding to “…bless, and curse not”!

So I started blessing this woman, thanking God for her and believing God to do something truly remarkable to make her life better and more blessed. As it turned out, that horrible article would be the last article of its kind about us to ever appear in that national newspaper. I am convinced that our decision to “...bless, and curse not” caused God’s power to be released in the spirit realm, preventing any future negative press from being printed about us in that particular nation.

If someone has done something bad or injurious to you, I realize how tempting it is to retaliate by saying a lot of bad things about the offender. But in the end, this fleshly reaction won’t help anyone. You never have to fall into this trap that causes you to be bitter and that releases a lot of negative words and curses on those who wronged you. You can take a redemptive approach — choose to speak only good about those who have sought to do you harm.

If you’ll take the right approach to this hurtful situation, your actions can release enough supernatural power to keep this type of event from ever being replicated in the future. But if you respond wrongly, it probably won’t be too long until you’re facing the same situation again.


~~ ><}}> In His Service <{{>< ~~

Stace: 5'1

I am 5'1...

Did you know that it can be a whole different world for someone who is 5'1 from someone who is taller than this?  Let me share a tidbit with you.  I drive a blazer and fit really nice it it.  The steering wheel tilts down so that I can see over it, and the seat goes forward so I can reach the gas and break peddles.  Pretty cool huh?  But, last month, my blazer broke down and had to have some repairs so I was without my vehicle for a couple of weeks.  My boss allowed me to drive his large work van for the duration.  This was really a blessing.  Thing is, I had to climb up

Rick Renner: Be Not Slothful in Business

Your salvation is a free gift of God’s grace, and nothing you do can buy you a special standing with Him. Nevertheless, how you serve God and the testimony that your life demonstrates to the world is very important to Jesus Christ.

So I urge you to take an honest look at yourself today. Ask yourself, When people look at my life, do they come away with a positive idea of what a Christian is like, or does my example leave people unimpressed with Jesus Christ? Then ask the Lord to show you any changes you need to make so you can move on up to a higher level of excellence in God!

Read the Article in Full

Spurgeon: Believers Shall not Abide in Darkness

Believers Shall not Abide in Darkness

C. H. Spurgeon.

 

 

John 12:37-50But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him:…

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Perhaps the worst feature of darkness is, that it is so bewildering. You have to walk, and yet your way is hidden from your eyes. This is hard work. God will help His children, will He not? Ay, that He will, but we cannot see how I We look upward, and see no twinkling star; downward and do not even find a glow worm. Surely we shall see a candle in some window! But no! we are lost in a dark wood. Have we not somewhere about us a match that we could strike? We fumble for it; we find it, it is damp, we have no light. The question that now chills the heart is — How can God deliver me? We do not see how He can make a way of escape. What simple. tons we are to fancy that if we do not see a way of deliverance God does not see one either! If you have ever steamed up the Rhine, you have looked before you, and it has looked as if you could go no further; the river seemed to be a lake; great mountains and vast rocks blocked up all further advance. Suddenly there has been a turn in the stream, and at once a broad highway has been before you, inviting you to enter the heart of the country. Perhaps in Providence you are in one of those parts of the river of life where no progress appears possible. You are quite blocked up, and this causes you darkness of mind. Cease from this unbelieving bewilderment. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee thy heart's desire."
(C. H. Spurgeon.)

Ps Peter Tan: You Do Not Have To Protect Your Position

Some people pray so hard to get something from God. Then when God blessed them, they protect their blessings in a very natural way and they loose it. Or maybe God blessed you with grace and favor with people. And slowly you are promoted higher and higher until you are promoted very high. Whether it is a secular job or a political position or a church position. Then you forgot one thing: it was God who gave you the position.

You don't have to protect your position. You never got it by yourself. What you get by yourself, you have to protect yourself. But what you get from God, God protects you. But what happens is sometimes people reached those position and they try to do things to protect themselves. They are trying to keep in natural ways what God gave them by spiritual means. And they become a mere natural human being.

If God gave it, if anybody wants to take and God sees it fit, let it be so. But if God wants you to have it nobody else can take it. Whoever tries is in danger of facing God's dealings. You don't even have to protect that position.

I find many Christian leaders trying to protect their position. Instead of remaining with an open heart for God and just doing what God wants you to do, sometimes to protect their position they loose their zeal for God. They loose the ability to count it all lost and pressed on. They lost their bravery to do the greater things for God. It's important that we don't loose these things. We need to follow hard after God.

Mueller: Though I know Not Whence the Means Are To Come

George Mueller:

..though I know not whence the means are to come.”

Samuel Chadwick in his most inspiring book, The Path of Prayer, relates an occasion when Dr. A. T. Pierson was the guest of George Müller at his orphanage. He says: “One night when all the household had retired he [Müller] asked Pierson to join him in prayer. He told him that there was absolutely nothing in the house for next morning’s breakfast. My friend tried to remonstrate with him and to remind him that all the stores were closed. Müller knew all that. He had prayed as he always prayed, and he never told anyone of his needs but God. They prayed—at least Müller did—and Pierson tried to. They went to bed and slept, and breakfast for two thousand children was there in abundance at the usual breakfast hour. Neither Müller nor Pierson ever knew how the answer came. The story was told next morning to Simon Short of Bristol, under pledge of secrecy until the benefactor died. The details of it are thrilling, but all that need be told here is that the Lord called him out of bed in the middle of the night to send breakfast to Müller’s orphanage, and knowing nothing of the need, or of the two men at prayer, he sent provisions that would feed them a month. This is like the Lord God of Elijah, and still more like the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mueller: When I first began to allow God...

When I first began to allow God to deal with me, relying on Him, taking Him at His word, and set out fifty years ago simply relying on Him for myself, family, taxes, traveling expenses and every other need, I rested on the simple promises I found in the sixth chapter of Matthew. I believed the Word, I rested on it and practiced it. I took God at His Word. A stranger, a foreigner in England, I knew seven languages and might have used them perhaps as a means of remunerative employment, but I had consecrated myself to labor for the Lord. I put my reliance in the God who has promised, and He has acted according to His Word. I’ve lacked nothing—nothing. I have had my trials and difficulties, and my purse empty, but my receipts have aggregated. I have received thousands and thousands of dollars, while the work has gone on these fifty-one years. Then, with regard to my pastoral work; for the past fifty-one years I have had great difficulties, great trials and perplexities. There will always be difficulties, always trials. But God has sustained me out of them, and the work has gone on.

Mueller: How Faith is Increased

God delights to increase the faith of His children. Our faith, which is feeble at first, is developed and strengthened more and more by use. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means. I say—and say it deliberately—trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats, are the very food of faith.

I get letters from so many of God’s dear children who say: “Dear Brother Müller: I’m writing this because I am so weak and feeble in faith.” Just so surely as we ask to have our faith strengthened, we must feel a willingness to take from God’s hand the means for strengthening it. We must allow Him to educate us through trials and bereavements and troubles. It is through trials that faith is exercised and developed more and more. God affectionately permits difficulties, that He may develop unceasingly that which He is willing to do for us, and to this end we should not shrink, but if He gives us sorrow and hindrances and losses and afflictions, we should take them out of His hands as evidences of His love and care for us in developing more and more that faith which He is seeking to strengthen in us.

~~

[Trials, yes...

Sicknesses , no ...

We walk through trials such as Jesus did, not sickness.]