| Topics | Illustrations | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Defending God | You defend God like you defend a lion you open the cage and get out of the way. | C.S. Lewis |
| Man’s Need for God | The things that are supposed to give delight (money, sensuality, success etc.) lose their savor, becoming pointless, utterly futile. Then comes the thirst for eternity. Oh, this terrible thirst! Nothing will satisfy except what is unattainable. “God!” They cry out, or: “Woe!”, and long for solitude. In solitude eternity is a little less remote than amidst the distractions of the world. Perhaps they break in the struggle, and then are more utterly lost than before. If they come through the struggle they are listened to; their voices demand and get a hearing. This puts power within their grasp. Christ died to escape power, Muhammad lived to wield it. Power is the greatest snare of all. How terrible is power in all its manifestations the voice raised to command, the hand stretched out to seize, the eyes burning with appetite. Money had better be given away; organizations had better be disbanded; bodies had better lie separately. There is no peace at all except in looking across Time at Eternity beyond as one looks at a distant view from a mountain top. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Man’s Need for God | The most we can hope for in life is unyielding despair. | Bertrand Russell |
| Man’s Need for God | The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism; not Europe versus America; not even the East versus the West. It is whether man can live without God. | William Durant |
| Man’s Need for God | The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toward a goal that you can hope to reach and where none can tarry long. One by one as they march our comrades vanish from our side, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death. Brief and powerless is man's life. On him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter roles on its relentless way. For man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day. | Bertrand Russel |
| Man’s Need for God | Life is like an empty bubble floating on a sea of nothingness. | Jean Paul Sartre |
| Man’s Need for God | What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. | Blaise Pascal |
| Morality | Ancient ethics always dealt with three questions. Modern ethics deals with only one, or at the most, two. The three questions are like the three things a fleet of ships are told by its sailing orders. First the ships must know how to avoid bumping into each other. This is social ethics, and modern as well as ancient ethicists deal with it. Second, they must know how to stay shipshape and avoid sinking. This is individual ethics, virtues and vices, character building, and we hear very little about this from our modern ethical philosophies. Third and most important of all, they must know why the fleet is at sea in the first place. I think I know why modern philosophers dare not raise this greatest of questions, because they have no answer to it. | C.S. Lewis |
| Morality | The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime. | Robert Fitch |
| Morality | The world turns and changes, but one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, however you disguise it, this thing does not change; the perpetual struggle of good and evil. | T.S. Eliot |
| Existence of God | “The one question in need of an answer is the question of God. Science, with all of its strident gains, must still remain contented to describe the “what” of human observations. Only God can answer the “why.” | Stephen Hawking |
| Existence of God | (Mind) The existence of consciousness is a fact of fundamental significance about the world in which we live. Each of us experiences it, and only the most skeptical of philosophers would question that we rightly extrapolate from our individual perception of it to the belief that its possession is shared by other humans and to a lesser degree, by the higher animals. It is one of our glories; Pascal wrote that ‘All bodies, the firmament, the stars, the earth and its kingdoms are not worth the least of minds, for it knows them all and itself too, while; bodies know nothing.” | John Polkinghorne |
| Existence of God | On August 7th 1961, 26 year old Major Gherman Titov became the second Soviet cosmonaut to successfully orbit the earth and return to safety. Later speaking at a the World’s Fare and enjoying his moment of glory he sarcastically let it be known that on his journey into space he hadn’t seen God. On Christmas Eve 1968 three American astronauts were the first to go around the dark side of the moon away from the earth. Having fired their rockets on Apollo 8 they were homeward bound and got a glimpse of the earth from an angle that no one had ever seen before. In the throes of this awe inspiring moment they opened the pages of the Bible to the book of Genesis and read for the world to hear. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” | |
| Existence of God | Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes, and the profounder the surrounding darkness. | Aldous Huxley |
| Existence of God | Brother Lawrence was powerfully touched by the revelation of the divine Godhead through creation. At the age of 18 his conversion experience began. In the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. | From Practicing the Presence of God |
| Existence of God | There is a kind of God-shaped hole in people’s lives, and Langdon Gilkey is right to say that “One of the most striking things about our human existence in this epoch is that we notice that relation to the unconditional as much as by its absence as its presence.” | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Existence of God | Several years ago, Encyclopedia Britannica published a fifty-five volume series entitled the Great Books of the Western world. Mortimer Adler, a noted philosopher and legal scholar, was coeditor of this series, which marshaled the eminent thinkers of the western world and their writings on the most important ideas that have been studied and investigated over the centuries. This includes ideas in law, science, philosophy, history, theology, and love that have shaped the minds and destinies of people. These essays are assembled for comparison and contrast. Very striking to the observant reader is that the longest essay is on God. When Mr. Adler was asked by a reviewer why this them merited such protracted coverage, his answer was uncompromising. “Because, more consequences for life and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from any other basic question.” | |
| Existence of God | Sir Isaac Newton had a replica of our solar system made in miniature. In the center was the sun with its retinue of planets revolving around it. A scientist entered Newton's study one day, and exclaimed, "My, what an exquisite thing this is. Who made it?" "Nobody." replied Newton to the questioner who was an unbeliever. "You must think I am a fool. Of course, somebody made it, and he is a genius." Laying his book aside, Newton arose and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder and said: "This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you and I know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker. Now tell me, by what sort of reasoning do you reach such incongruous conclusions?" | |
| Existence of God | 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: why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad! | |
| Existence of God | The time had finally come. Man had gotten so arrogant that he decided that God was no longer needed. So, a representative from the scientific community was chosen to tell God that he wasn't needed. The scientist approached God and said, "Look, we don't need you anymore! We can do everything you can! We can create life, control the weather, and everything else that you do." God said, "You think so? Let’s have a little contest! If you can create life like I can, from dirt, then You're right! You don't need me anymore!" "Ok, you're on! said the man. He immediately bent down and picked up a handful of dirt and started to shape it. "Not so fast." said God. "Get your own dirt!" | |
| Existence of God | The story is told of a cynic sitting under a nut tree, carrying on a a rather jesting and gibing monologue with God. His grounds for complain lay in what he considered to be an obvious failure on the part of God to go by the book on structural design. “Lord”, he said, “how is it that you made such a large and sturdy tree to hold such tiny, almost weightless nuts? And yet, you made small, tender plants to hold such large and weighty watermelons!” As he chuckled away at the folly of such disproportion in God’s mindless universe, a nut suddenly fell on his head. After a pause he muttered, “Thank God that wasn’t a watermelon!” | |
| Adultery | After discovering her husband had been cheating on her, this woman posted the following on a roadside billboard on the way to her hunsband’s work. You could imagine is surprise. To my cheating husband Paul, you deserve each other, when you get home I won’t be there, enjoy your drive to work. Lisa | |
| Blessings | Blessings in your life aren’t intended to fulfill you they are intended to direct you. | |
| Baptism of the Spirit | To be baptized in the Spirit means to actively live under the influence of God’s Spirit at all times. | |
| Baptism of the Spirit | Jesus commanded His disciples to be filled with new power before they attempted to advance The Kingdom. | |
| Baptism of the Spirit | Life is filled with prerequisites. You can’t drive w/o driver’s license, you can’t collect 200 w/o pass go, you can’t get on a plane w/o TSA, can’t go into sbux w/o mask on, you can’ t advance God’s kingdom without the Holy Spirit. | |
| Baptism of the Spirit | The flames which sat upon each showed them that they were to be ablaze with love, intense with zeal, burning with self-sacrifice; and that they were to go forth among men to speak not with the chill tongue of deliberate logic, but with burning tongues of passionate pleading; persuading and entreating men to come unto Christ that they might live. | C.H. SPURGEON |
| Baptism of the Spirit | Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn. | Charles Wesley |
| Baptism of the Spirit | GOD HAS THE WIND and HE HAS THE FIRE – WHERE IS THE WOOD? | |
| Baptism of the Spirit | Stirring your spiritual gift makes the fire in your church burn brighter and hotter. | |
| Character | "What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet." It doesn’t matter what you call a rose its fragrance is as sweet regardless. | |
| Character | In their heated Presidential election Stanton ridiculed Lincoln saying, “Why go to Africa to see an ape when one resides here in Springfield Illinois.” Years later when Stanton at the residence of Abraham Lincoln following his assignation he said, “Here lies the greatest leader…..” | |
| Character | It’s when you get knocked down that you discover your true character. | |
| Church | The church is the Pillar of truth, it is the bride of Christ, pearl of great price, living temple, kingdom of priests, it is the FAMILY OF GOD | |
| Church | The church isn’t like a family it is a family. Regardless of what you think/experience. | |
| Church | The story is told of the pig and the chicken that went to Church and heard the Pastor was going to have birthday. Each offered to donate towards the birthday party. The Chicken offered to donate eggs but the pig offered to donate bacon. The chicken said: “Do you understand what you are saying? Pig said yes, to you an egg is an offering; to me, bacon is a sacrifice!” BOTH MATTER | |
| Church | Of all of God’s creations, the church is the only one that will eternally exist to display the fulness of His glory. | |
| Church | Early Christians had an appetite to know who and what they believed in. | |
| Church | Church Buildings are good but they make home groups more important not less. | |
| Church | In the spiritual realm, God in the Old Testament exercised His authority through prophet, priest and king. In the NT he exercises it through His children by faith the name His Son. | |
| Church, Attendance | Sunday, Apr. 30, 2006 Posted: 7:53:47AM EST The latest Gallup poll found that 42 percent of Americans say they attend church or synagogue once a week or almost every week and among the frequent churchgoers, most are from the South while the New England states have the lowest percentage of church attendance. Based on a large sample size of more than 68,000 interviews conducted over the past two years, the survey saw as high a percentage as 58 in Alabama while New Hampshire and Vermont showed the lowest attendance rate of 24 percent.Survey results revealed a wide variation across 48 states, but overall patterns clearly indicated the highest church attendance in the traditionally Southern states. Of the Southern states, Virginia had the lowest reported churchgoer rate with 44 percent, which still lies above the national average. Church attendance is also high in certain Midwestern states, including Nebraska with 53 percent.At the other end of the spectrum, the New England states show church attendance rates in the 20 to 30 percent range with the highest among those being Connecticut at 37 percent. The highest most populous states reported the following rates: California, 32 percent; Texas, 49 percent; New York, 33 percent; Florida, 39 percent; and Illinois, 42 percent.The regional survey follows a Gallup study that showed the highest church attendance rate to be among Evangelicals. Evangelical churchgoers were found to range in the 60 percentile. Also concluded from church attendance surveys were subgroup patterns. Women are more likely to attend church than men, older Americans are more likely to attend than the younger, and blacks are more likely to attend than whites. The Gallup poll conducted 68,031 telephone interviews with Americans aged 18 and older from January 2004 through March 2006. | |
| Church, Attendance | We have community with each other because we have community with the Father and the Son. | |
| Complaining | A MAN NAMED THOMAS became a monk, joined a monastery, and took a vow of silence. The only exception to the vow was that, once every ten years, monks were allowed to make one statement then the silence must resume for another decade. After his first ten years in the monastery, Thomas was called into the study of his superior, who said, "Brother Thomas, do you have anything to say?" "The food is bad," the monk replied. Then he went back to his duties. A decade passed. Again, Thomas was summoned to the study of his superior. "Brother Thomas," said the superior, . "do you have anything to say?" "The bed is hard," the monk replied. Then he returned to his chores. Another decade passed. Again, Thomas was called in before his superior. "Brother Thomas," said the superior, "do you have anything to say?" "I quit," the monk replied. The superior frowned. "I'm not surprised. You've done nothing but complain ever since you got here!" | |
| Compromise | Like Bleach and ammonia, water and oil, Yankees Fans and Red Sox Fans so is Worldliness to your Christian faith. | |
| Compromise | Biggest threat to joy is watering down your faith with a love for this world. | |
| Compromise | The greatest need in the church today is for our lifestyle to be congruent with our confession. But your confession has to be TRUE. | |
| Compromise | You’re in this world but you’re definitely not of it - Love for the things of the world indicates a life untransformed by God | |
| Confession | Neuroscientists now believe it’s biologically better for us to confess our secrets, or better, just to refuse to be party to someone else’s. The reason: holding on to them puts the brain in an awkward, compromised position. The cingulate cortex, essential to our emotional responses, is wired to tell the truth. This “logical lobe” signals other regions of the brain to share information so it can move on to more important functions, like learning. But when you keep a secret locked inside, you don’t allow the cingulate to perform its natural functions. Instead, the cortex becomes stressed. When you choose to hold onto a secret, your brain’s orbital prefrontal cortex simulates in your mind just how bad sharing the secret will be, imagining all the possible negative outcomes. “The prefrontal cortex is involved in decision-making, complex thought and deception,” says neurosurgeon Gopal Chopra, chief executive of PINGMD, which provides an app to facilitate communication between doctors and patients. If the two regions are at cross-purposes, the end result is what Chopra calls “the complications of emotional burden.”http://www.pingmd.com/ | |
| Consistency | Consistency in your relationship with Jesus will make you confident at His appearing. | |
| Consumerism | Having a consumer mentality is a toxic influence to your church experience. | |
| Consumerism | People see the church as part of the service industry, providing a good, on demand product for the consumer. | |
| Conversion | Hudson Taylor had grown up in a Christian home, but found himself working among non believers as a junior clerk in the bank. His peers laughed at the ideas of Jesus, His miracles and salvation. Hudson soon found himself questioning everything he’d been taught at church and in the mornings and evenings his father had read the family the Bible. He soon despised “family devotional time” and going to church. His mother and his sister both noticed a change in him. The change was so profound that his sister wrote a promise in her diary to God, that she would pray for her brother three times a day until he was saved. About a month later Hudson’s mother was away at her sisters house. During an afternoon gathering she removed herself from her friends and stole away to a private place. She was burdened with her sons salvation and began to pray fervently for him. She prayed for hours when all of a sudden there was a peace in her heart and she knew that God had heard her prayers. At this exact time Hudson was home alone. He was board and was looking for something to do. He grabbed one of his fathers evangelistic tracts of the shelf. He knew the first part would contain some amazing story to grab the readers attention and the second part would contain the gospel message. He read the first part for the joy of the story purposing to ignore the second. But as he read his heart was stirred. Hudson couldn’t put the book down. As he began to read the second part of the tract a phrase struck him, “The finished work of Christ.” He put the book down and began to think. “If the work of salvation was finished by Christ there was nothing to do but to accept it.” He knelt down right there and prayed for Jesus to be His Lord and Savior. Hudson waited for his mother to come home. Two weeks later she came home. She walked through the door. Hudson ran to her and said, “I have the most amazing news.” She smiled broadly and said, “I already know what you have to tell me. You have made your peace with God and I have been rejoicing about it for two weeks. | |
| Day of Pentecost | The Day of Pentecost marks the manifestation of the New Covenant and God’s Kingdom work through His church. | |
| Death | “Its not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” | Woody Allen |
| Death | Our civilization is founded on the shambles and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.” | The Sick Soul |
| Death | Death is the one experience when we leave everything behind and take with us everything that we are. It is the moment of truth where there is no more showmanship. It is the individual alone against destiny. | American Psychologist and Philosopher William James. |
| Decisions | It reminds me of a young man during the Civil War who couldn’t decide which side of the war he wanted be on. So he put on a coat from the South and trousers from the South and the moment he stepped on the battlefield they started firing at him from both sides. | |
| Decisions | Quote: It is often stated that if God would only provide sufficient empirical evidence of Himself man would believe, yet we see that when the evidence is provided, as it was in Jesus, that God was still rejected. | |
| Decisions | Faith requires a very tangible step of faith. It’s an expectation that we assume in every other sphere of life. To begin working for a company you must officially accept the position once its offered and sign the necessary papers. To be married you must stand before a pastor with your spouse to be and utter those words “I will, I do.” To be a Christian you must exercise your will, and say, “I do” to Jesus, believing in the gospel, surrendering to Him as Lord and receiving Him into your heart. | |
| Despair | Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of pleasure. | G.K. Chesterton |
| Discipleship | If you fill yourself with the thoughts and ideas of man you will find yourself to be a disciple, but not one of Christ’s. | |
| Discipleship | We treat Christianity like shopping for a car. We act as if we’re able to go in and choose the model and then pick the package that we want. Some say they have picked the conversion package. They’re saved from an eternity of hell but they’re not necessarily devoted to Christ. Others will say, “There are various stages in salvation.” Nonsense, if you’re not devoted then you probably were never converted. | |
| Discipleship | A few years ago England was smitten with a series of unrelenting storms. After it was all said and done nearly 3 million trees had been destroyed. The interesting thing was this, the trees had all been uprooted. One of the horticulturists had noted that the trees were uprooted because the soil is normally water saturated. Because of the water saturation the roots have no need to travel deeper into the soil to find water. Because of the shallow root structure the trees were literally pulled out of the ground. | |
| Discipleship | Did I firmly believe, as millions say they do, that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, religion would mean to me everything. I would cast away earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity. Religion would be my first waking thought, and my last image before sleep sank me into unconsciousness. I would labor in its cause alone. I would take thought for the morrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering… I would strive to look upon eternity alone and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or everlastingly miserable. I would go forth to the world and preach to it in season and out of season, and my text would be, WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL? This was written by an atheist to shame Christians who were lacking in action, but it had the opposite effect on C.T. Studd. | |
| Excuses | Soccer’s Zinedane Zidane experienced humility on the global scale when in overtime of a tied World Cup game, he lost his composure and attacked one of his opponents. His behavior left his team with 10 players, and the ultimately lost the game 5-3 in what would have been one of the greatest sports performances of all time. After 2 days of global scrutiny and criticism Zidane explained the situation away saying, “I tell myself that if things happened this way, it’s because somewhere up there it was decided that way. I don’t regret anything that happened, I accept it.” | |
| Eternity | Jesus will be the focus. When I go to the beach I enjoy the warmth of the sand on my feet, the sun on my face, and the smell of sea air. But I have come to see and experience the ocean. It’s power and vastness and the rhythmic melody of crashing waves stirs the soul. | |
| Evangelism | “Have you ever been saved?” A rather wide-eyed young fellow startled me with his question as we waited for the bus. He handed me a booklet with a picture of hell on the front. “Sure,” I responded. “Once when I was nine years old I was swimming at Jones Beach on Long Island, and a strong undertow began to drag me out to sea. My uncle heard my call for help and ….” “No, no,” he interrupted, “Redeemed! Have you ever been redeemed? You know, reborn … washed in the blood?” “What,” I inquired, “in the world are you talking about?” “Convicted. Have you ever felt convicted?” “No, of course not!” I replied. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law.” He looked at me square in the eye. “I think you need to be delivered.” “Delivered? I was just waiting for the bus home. I think I’ll stick with that, but thank you very much.” He looked at me as if I were speaking another language. “Can we have lunch together sometime?” he asked. “I work just down the street.” “Sure, that would be fine.” He looked harmless enough, but I must admit he was an unusual fellow and quite difficult to understand.That Wednesday I had lunch with Ed. He was a little late but explained that he was having some quiet time. “Quiet time?” I asked. “What do you mean?” “Each day just before lunch I have some time in my prayer closet,” he responded. I was puzzled. “Do you pray in a closet at work?” “No,” he answered. “It’s in my car.” “A closet in your car?!” He changed the subject. Like the first day I met him, again he left me confused. This Ed is quite a unique fellow, I thought.As we parted that day, Ed gave me a little booklet that explained how someone could come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I read it and understood it and knew that was exactly what I needed. That night I submitted my life to Jesus, and I was “born again” as it stated in the booklet. Two days later I told Ed. He was overjoyed.The following week we got together again, and Ed strongly urged me to find a good body. I was surprised at his suggestion, but it sounded good to me. I took his advice and proceeded to comb the local health clubs for an attractive woman. When I met Denise, I knew she was the one. We began to date and soon she became a believer, too. Ed rejoiced and told us that it was crucial that we get planted so that we could grow together.“Sometimes it’s hard to understand this guy,” I confided to Denise. I told Ed that I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by planted. He responded, “Committed! You both need to be committed now that you know Jesus.” ” Now wait a minute,” I protested. “Just because I don’t understand what planted means doesn’t mean I’m nuts. Anyway, I think that trusting Jesus is the most sane thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”It was obvious that Ed’s patience was growing thin. He explained, “Bob and Denise, you have to get plugged in. Don’t you understand?” No we didn’t! But I did wonder if getting plugged in had any connection with “going out under the power,” something that I had heard Ed mention but hoped it would never happen to me.Regretfully, I had to miss worship the next Sunday. But Ed and I had breakfast together Monday morning, and he filled me in on what happened. “God moved!” he said with excitement. “God really moved yesterday!” “Where is he now?” I pleaded. I was just getting to know Him, and now He’s gone?” “No, no, Bob, God hasn’t gone anywhere.” I was relieved. “It’s just that so many people were stepping out and moving in the gifts.” “You mean people were leaving during the meeting?” I asked. “And what’s this about presents?” ” No, it’s the gifts. The gifts were really flowing,” he said. “That’s beautiful,” I answered. “People were giving gifts to each other. I wish I was there.” Now Ed seemed confused.“Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “Denise was there, and boy, was she on fire.” “Fire? Denise got burned? What happened? Is she O.K.?” “No, Bob, you don’t understand.” (That sure is an understatement, I thought.) “Denise is just fine. It’s just that I believe she is really called, and that God wants to use her.” Things were not getting clearer. “Did Denise mention that she’s getting too many phone calls or something? And what’s this about God wanting to take advantage of her?” I asked. Ed sighed, “Can I walk in the light with you?” “Where do you want to go?” I answered. “Of course we can walk in the light. It’s daytime, Ed.” He just shook his head. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes it seems that Ed and I have a hard time communicating.It’s been two years since I was saved and delivered. Now I’m plugged in, planted, and committed to a good body. God has been moving, and I’ve been stepping out in the gifts. I can hardly believe how God has been using me! I have developed one new problem, though. It seems that all my old friends just don’t understand me anymore. When I share about my redemption, that I’ve been washed as white as snow, and that I desire to follow the Lamb, they seem to tune me right out. I guess they’re just convicted when they see that I’m on fire.“Have you ever been saved?” A rather wide-eyed young fellow startled me with his question as we waited for the bus. He handed me a booklet with a picture of hell on the front. “Sure,” I responded. “Once when I was nine years old I was swimming at Jones Beach on Long Island, and a strong undertow began to drag me out to sea. My uncle heard my call for help and ….” “No, no,” he interrupted, “Redeemed! Have you ever been redeemed? You know, reborn … washed in the blood?” “What,” I inquired, “in the world are you talking about?” “Convicted. Have you ever felt convicted?” “No, of course not!” I replied. “I’ve never been in trouble with the law.” He looked at me square in the eye. “I think you need to be delivered.” “Delivered? I was just waiting for the bus home. I think I’ll stick with that, but thank you very much.” He looked at me as if I were speaking another language. “Can we have lunch together sometime?” he asked. “I work just down the street.” “Sure, that would be fine.” He looked harmless enough, but I must admit he was an unusual fellow and quite difficult to understand.That Wednesday I had lunch with Ed. He was a little late but explained that he was having some quiet time. “Quiet time?” I asked. “What do you mean?” “Each day just before lunch I have some time in my prayer closet,” he responded. I was puzzled. “Do you pray in a closet at work?” “No,” he answered. “It’s in my car.” “A closet in your car?!” He changed the subject. Like the first day I met him, again he left me confused. This Ed is quite a unique fellow, I thought.As we parted that day, Ed gave me a little booklet that explained how someone could come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I read it and understood it and knew that was exactly what I needed. That night I submitted my life to Jesus, and I was “born again” as it stated in the booklet. Two days later I told Ed. He was overjoyed.The following week we got together again, and Ed strongly urged me to find a good body. I was surprised at his suggestion, but it sounded good to me. I took his advice and proceeded to comb the local health clubs for an attractive woman. When I met Denise, I knew she was the one. We began to date and soon she became a believer, too. Ed rejoiced and told us that it was crucial that we get planted so that we could grow together.“Sometimes it’s hard to understand this guy,” I confided to Denise. I told Ed that I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by planted. He responded, “Committed! You both need to be committed now that you know Jesus.” ” Now wait a minute,” I protested. “Just because I don’t understand what planted means doesn’t mean I’m nuts. Anyway, I think that trusting Jesus is the most sane thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”It was obvious that Ed’s patience was growing thin. He explained, “Bob and Denise, you have to get plugged in. Don’t you understand?” No we didn’t! But I did wonder if getting plugged in had any connection with “going out under the power,” something that I had heard Ed mention but hoped it would never happen to me.Regretfully, I had to miss worship the next Sunday. But Ed and I had breakfast together Monday morning, and he filled me in on what happened. “God moved!” he said with excitement. “God really moved yesterday!” “Where is he now?” I pleaded. I was just getting to know Him, and now He’s gone?” “No, no, Bob, God hasn’t gone anywhere.” I was relieved. “It’s just that so many people were stepping out and moving in the gifts.” “You mean people were leaving during the meeting?” I asked. “And what’s this about presents?” ” No, it’s the gifts. The gifts were really flowing,” he said. “That’s beautiful,” I answered. “People were giving gifts to each other. I wish I was there.” Now Ed seemed confused.“Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “Denise was there, and boy, was she on fire.” “Fire? Denise got burned? What happened? Is she O.K.?” “No, Bob, you don’t understand.” (That sure is an understatement, I thought.) “Denise is just fine. It’s just that I believe she is really called, and that God wants to use her.” Things were not getting clearer. “Did Denise mention that she’s getting too many phone calls or something? And what’s this about God wanting to take advantage of her?” I asked. Ed sighed, “Can I walk in the light with you?” “Where do you want to go?” I answered. “Of course we can walk in the light. It’s daytime, Ed.” He just shook his head. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes it seems that Ed and I have a hard time communicating.It’s been two years since I was saved and delivered. Now I’m plugged in, planted, and committed to a good body. God has been moving, and I’ve been stepping out in the gifts. I can hardly believe how God has been using me! I have developed one new problem, though. It seems that all my old friends just don’t understand me anymore. When I share about my redemption, that I’ve been washed as white as snow, and that I desire to follow the Lamb, they seem to tune me right out. I guess they’re just convicted when they see that I’m on fire. | Bob Cohen |
| Faith | Such is faith, springing up out of the immortal seed of love, and ever budding forth in new blossoms and maturing new fruit… constraining the reason to accept mysteries, the hand to work, the feet to run, the voice to bear witness as the case may be these acts…arising from faith seeing the invisible world and love choosing it. | John Henry Newman |
| Faith | Faith is the light of time, it alone recognizes truth without seeing it, touches what it cannot feel, looks upon this world as though it did not exist, sees what is not apparent. It is the key to celestial treasures, the key to the unfathomable mystery and knowledge of God. Faith conquers all the fantasy of falsehood; through faith God reveals and manifests Himself, defying all things. Faith removes the veil and uncovers eternal truth. When souls are given the understanding of faith, God speaks to them through all creation, and the universe becomes for them a living testimony which the finger of God continually traces before their eyes, the record of every passing moment, a sacred Scripture… Faith is only living at its best when sensible appearances contradict and attempt to destroy it.. To find God is good in the trivial and most ordinary events as in the greatest; is to have not an ordinary, but a great and extraordinary faith… How delightful the peace one enjoys when one has learned by faith to see God in this way through all creatures as through a transparent veil. Darkness becomes light and bitterness sweet.. there is nothing that faith does not penetrate and seek out. It passes beyond darkness, and no matter how deep the shadows, it passes through them to the truth which it always finally embraces, and from it is never separated. | Jean-Pierre de Caussade |
| Faith | In the 1830’s a young man named David Livingston had been touched by God to study medicine and become a pastor. After hearing a missionary speak his heart began to burn for the mission field, to preach the name of Jesus to people who had never heard. He began his 4 month journey by boat to Cape Elizabeth with 2 other missionaries joining him to preach the gospel in the interior of Africa, the continent also known as “The white man’s graveyard.” This ship was caught in a violent storm and with the mast and sails completely destroyed the ship was carried along the trade currents to Rio De Janeiro some 5000 miles away from its intended destination. Upon arriving David was zealous to preach the gospel to the Brazilians. He went to his compatriot William Ross and excitedly asked him to join him. William replied that he felt too seasick and that God had called him to Africa, not to Brazil. The ship finally would arrive in Cape Town, months late. William Ross and his wife were constantly complaining and comparing Cape Town to England. They had become disenchanted with ministering in the interior of Africa and were hoping to work in the more urban and comfortable areas. David Livingstone considered these types of missionaries, “Veranda Missionaries.” People willing to step out on the porch but adventure no further. | |
| Faith | Hudson Taylor had learned to trust God for his provisions, but that was when he was single. One time he found himself married, with a 2 year old daughter and a hospital to provide for. The money began to run out. One day the cook cake to him and informed him that he had just opened the last bag of rice. Hudson told him that God would provide. On that same day a letter arrived from a man in England. The letter, which included 50 pounds, instructed Hudson to write anytime that he needed money and the man would be more than willing to provide him money. Hudson read the letter to the Chinese cook who then ran through the halls of the hospital yelling, “God answers prayer, God answers prayer.” | |
| Faith | In the early 1900’s a young lady named Gladys Aylward felt a strong call to be a missionary in China. She was accepted to the London Missionary Societies Bible College and eagerly began her studies. Her first semester went horribly. She struggled taking tests and ultimately failed her Bible class. She was called to the schoolmaster’s office were she was told that she would have to leave Bible College. The schoolmaster tried to help Gladys see that she was probably never going to be a missionary in China. She had failed her Bible class, she was 27 years old (old to be beginning schooling for missions), she had no practical trade to make her useful in the mission field like being a teacher or a nurse. He said that it seemed God had different plans for her. Gladys went on to be one of the most powerfully used missionaries to set foot in China. With nothing more than sheer faith she set out alone, on an amazing adventure that would gain her worldwide recognition for her efforts to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Chinese and His loving care. Hundreds of churches would be planted, thousands of people would be saved, towns villages and regions would be transformed, hundreds of children would call her mother. All through a girl that was unqualified, had failed her Bible class, but had the determination and faith to continue and trust that with God all things are possible. | |
| Faith | Shrouded in a dense fog, a large steamer edged slowly forward off the coast of Newfoundland, its foghorn crying out somber notes of warning. The captain - near exhaustion from lack of sleep - was startled by a gentle tap on his shoulder. He turned and found himself face-to-face with an old man in his late seventies.The old man said, "Captain, I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon." (It was then Wednesday). The captain pondered for a moment, and then snorted: "Impossible." "Very well," the old man responded, "if your ship can't take me, God will find some other means to take me. I have never broken an engagement in fifty-seven years."Lifting his weary hands in a gesture of despair, the captain replied, "I would help if I could - but I am helpless." Undaunted, the old man suggested, "Let's go down to the chart room and pray." The captain raised his eyebrows in utter disbelief, looking at the old man as if he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum. "Do you know how dense the fog is?" the captain demanded. The old man responded, "No, my eye is not on the thickness of the fog but on the living God who controls every circumstance of my life."Against his better judgment, the captain accompanied the old man to the chart room and kneeled with him in prayer. With simple words a child might use, the old man prayed: "O Lord, if it is consistent with thy will, please remove this fog in five minutes. Thou knowest the engagement thou didst make for me in Quebec on Saturday. I believe it is thy will."The captain, a nominal Christian at best, thought it wise to humor the old man and recite a short prayer. But before he was able to utter a single word, he felt a tap on his shoulder. The old man requested, "Don't pray, because you do not believe; and as I believe God has already answered, there is no need for you to pray." The captain's mouth dropped open. Then the old man explained: "Captain I have known my Lord for fifty-seven years and there has never been a single day that I have failed to gain an audience with the King. Get up, captain, and open the door, and you will find the fog is gone." The captain did as he was requested, and was astonished to find that the fog had indeed disappeared.The captain later testified that his encounter with the aged George Muller completely revolutionized his Christian life. He had seen with his own eyes that Muller's God was the true and living God of the Bible. He had seen incredible power flow from a frail old man. . . a power rooted in simple childlike faith in God | |
| Faith | Living out your faith means obedience based, not outcome based decision making. | |
| Faith | Real faith produces unconditional obedience. | |
| Faith | If you only do what you can do you will never experience what GOD CAN DO. | |
| Faith | You will believe God for the big after you have believed him for the small. | |
| Faith | Gladys Aylward was serving God in a remote village high in the mountains of China. She had developed a strong reputation with the local authority, called the Mandarin. One day the Mandarin sent an urgent summons to Gladys. There was a riot in the prison. Prisoners were killing each other and all of the guards were too afraid to go in and take control. Gladys had no idea why the Mandarin had chosen her, but as always she saw it as an opportunity to further the gospel. She went to the prison where the governor unlocked the door for her. She walked through a dark and dank tunnel feeling the walls to find her way and praying all the time. As she neared the tunnels end she heard screaming let she had never heard before. As she came into the light a sight was before her like no other. There was a man with a machete swinging wildly, there were prisoner dismembered and dead, and others huddling in a corner. Gladys said the first thing that came to here mind. She yelled to the man, "Put down that Machete right now." The man turned towards her, his eyes black and wild with evil. His machete was raised and Gladys thought he would be coming for her. Instead he dropped the machete. Gladys ordered all the weapons to be brought to her and for the men to clean up the mess and get into a line. Gladys had never considered prison ministry but from that point on she began to minister in the prison and many of the men became believers in Jesus Christ. | |
| Faith | There was an interpreter for a Christian missionary in Viet Nam whose name was Phung Hien. He was in Viet Nam as a 17 year old and in 1988 an evangelist who had ministered with him saw him again, at that point some 17 years later. The evangelist asked him, "Hien, what has happened to you after all these years?" He said, "You'll never believe what had happened to me. Because I was a Christian because I was an interpreter for the missionaries and because I interpreted for the American troops I was one day arrested immediately and put into prison. And as I was in prison they gave me the writings of Marx and Engels, brainwashed me into disavowing God. For month after month of sheer torture I said, "Alirght I'm not going to believe in God. I am going to disavow His existence. So what happened as I began to reflect on these issues and consider all that was at stake I had made a decision that when I woke up the next morning for the first time in my life I wasn't going to begin the day by praying to God. And he didn't. That day his commandant put him in charge of cleaning the latrines in prison. He said it was the most horrible experience. The stench was horrible. He could barely stand it. And as he was cleaning he looked over at the waste paper basket. He said I saw pieces of paper with human excrement on it and i was emptying into a bag when all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw one of those was written in English. I hadn't read English for so long now. I hadn't read English for so long now i looked around to make sure no one was looking. I took the piece of paper and washed off the dirt from it and slipped it into my pocket. I went back to my room that night, waited for all of my roommates to go to sleep and hidden under the mosquito net i flew to the flashlight, i looked at that piece of paper and on the right hand side it said, "Romans 8". And i started to read, "And we know that all things work together for the good for those who are the called of God, to those who have been called according to His purpose. What shall we say then, if God is for us who can be against us. Who is He who condemns, it is God who justifies. Who shall separate us from the Love of Christ." Hien began to read and read and the tears began to pour down from his face. He got down on his knees and said, "Lord you wouldn't even let me get out of your reach for 24 hours. Forgive me. Next, i went to the commander and said do you mind if i clean the latrines every day. He went every day, and the commander had been given an NT by some missionaries a long time ago. He was using it for toilet paper. Hien would go and wash the paper and bring it back. He was collecting the whole of the book of Romans in a prison camp in Viet Nam. Finally they let him go. He was trying to escape with three others. 5 Viet Kong came and asked him, "Hien are you trying to escape." He said, "NO." They said, "Tell us the truth." He said, "No" and they walked away. He said, "Here I go again God trying to run my own life. If they come again I will tell them the truth." An hour before they were going to depart the men came back and said, "Hien you are trying to escape aren't you." He said, "Yes, what are you going to do put me in prison." They took him into a room and shut the door and said, "No we want to go with you." They got on that boat and out onto the hight seas. Hien said they would have been drowned but these men were expert skippers and they were able to move the boat to safety and to Thailand. Today Hien lives in California where he lives as a Christian business man. | |
| Faith | God is a person. He has made real promises to you that are realized through faith | |
| Faith | EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE BOILS DOWN TO FAITH in GOD – PERIOD | |
| Faith | God our Father has made all things depend on faith so that whoever has faith will have everything, and whoever does not have faith will have nothing. - | Martin Luther |
| Faith | FAITH: Faith is believing that something is true and committing your life to it. | |
| Faith | “Faith, mighty faith, sees the promise, And looks to God alone; Laughs at impossibilities, And cries it shall be done. | Charles Wesley |
| Faith | FAITH SHOULD BE PROPORTIONAL TO OBJECT IT’S INVESTED IN. | |
| Faith | Faith means trusting God without knowing if what’s coming is better. | |
| Faith | You will never experience full life of faith unless your love for God is unmatched. | |
| Faith | The biggest thing for us is a small thing for GOD. | |
| Faith | The evidence of real faith is found more in what you do than what you say. | |
| Faith | Impact of your faith can be measured by the influence it has on the lives of OTHERS. | |
| Faith | Faith means believing that the best the World has to offer is nothing compared to God. | |
| Faith | He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep for that which he cannot lose. | Jim Elliot |
| Faith | “Faith expects from God what is beyond all expectation.” | Andrew Murray |
| Faith | Faith isn’t only to be possessed it is to be used. | |
| Flesh | By sarx (flesh) Paul means neither the soft muscular tissue which covers our bony skeleton, nor our bodily instincts and appetites, but rather the whole of our humanness viewed as corrupt and unredeemed, ‘our fallen, egocentric human nature’, or more briefly ‘the sin-dominated self’. | John Stott |
| Trials | MAKING METAL STRONG: Tempering involves heating metal to a precise temperature below the critical point and holding at this temperature for a fixed time. Metal then is cooled in still air. Becomes STRONGER - DURABLE - FLEXIBLE –EASIER WORK WITH | |
| Trials | “To learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings.” | George Mueller |
| Trials | In chaos theory, the butterfly effect states small localized change in a complex system can have large effects somewhere else... IE simple movement like that of a flapping of a wing by a butterfly gives rise to a tornado somewhere else. | |
| Trust | In 1859 Charles Blondin was the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope, a 2” diam rope, 1,300 feet long he walked across it 190 feet above Niagara River. He did this several times: dressed in a sack, walking on stilts, riding a bicycle, pushing a wheelbarrow full of potatoes, One time put a small portable stove in the wheelbarrow and cooked and ate an omelet ½ way across. At one point he rolled his wheelbarrow up to the crowd asked a man in the crowd, Do you believe that I can carry a person across in this? He Yes. Do you want to get in Emphatic NO? Believe and Trust | |
| Trust | Faith is a living bold TRUST in God’s grace. | Martin Luther |
| Trust | God’s plan today is preparing you for His purposes tomorrow. | |
| Comparison | Comparison is the THIEF OF JOY | Teddy Roosevelt |
| Family | As I start the twilight years of my life, I still try to look back and figure out what it was all about. I’m still not sure what is meant by good fortune and success. I know fame and power are for the birds. But then life suddenly comes into focus, And, ah, there stand my kids. I love them. | Lee Iacocca |
| Family | Leo Tolstoy revealed in My Confessions that the blatant blunder of his own life was the love of writing and of human acclaim, which robbed him of the reassure relationships that bring meaning. | Leo Tolstoy |
| Fear | Fear is a powerful, unpleasant feeling of risk or danger, either real or imaginedAAchluophobia - Fear of darkness. Acrophobia - Fear of heights. Agliophobia - Fear of pain. Agoraphobia - Fear of open spaces or crowds. Aichmophobia - Fear of needles or pointed objects.Amaxophobia - Fear of riding in a car. Androphobia - Fear of men.Anginophobia - Fear of angina or choking.Anthrophobia - Fear of flowers.Anthropophobia - Fear of people or society.Aphenphosmphobia - Fear of being touched.Arachnophobia - Fear of spiders.Arithmophobia - Fear of numbers.Astraphobia - Fear of thunder and lightning.Ataxophobia - Fear of disorder or untidiness.Atelophobia - Fear of imperfection.Atychiphobia - Fear of failure.Autophobia - Fear of being alone.BBacteriophobia - Fear of bacteria.Barophobia - Fear of gravity.Bathmophobia - Fear of stairs or steep slopes.Batrachophobia - Fear of amphibians.Belonephobia - Fear of pins and needles.Bibliophobia - Fear of books.Botanophobia - Fear of plants.CCacophobia - Fear of ugliness.Catagelophobia - Fear of being ridiculed.Catoptrophobia - Fear of mirrors.Chionophobia - Fear of snow.Chromophobia - Fear of colors.Chronomentrophobia - Fear of clocks.Claustrophobia - Fear of confined spaces.Coulrophobia - Fear of clowns.Cyberphobia - Fear of computers.Cynophobia - Fear of dogs.DDendrophobia - Fear of trees.Dentophobia - Fear of dentists.Domatophobia - Fear of houses.Dystychiphobia - Fear of accidents.EEcophobia - Fear of the home.Elurophobia - Fear of cats.Entomophobia - Fear of insects.Ephebiphobia - Fear of teenagers.Equinophobia - Fear of horses.GGamophobia - Fear of marriage.Genuphobia - Fear of knees.Glossophobia - Fear of speaking in public.Gynophobia - Fear of women.HHeliophobia - Fear of the sun.Hemophobia - Fear of blood.Herpetophobia - Fear of reptiles.Hydrophobia - Fear of water.IIatrophobia - Fear of doctors.Insectophobia - Fear of insects.KKoinoniphobia - Fear of rooms.LLeukophobia - Fear of the color white.Lilapsophobia - Fear of tornadoes and hurricanes.Lockiophobia - Fear of childbirth.MMageirocophobia - Fear of cooking.Melanophobia - Fear of the color black.Microphobia - Fear of small things.Mysophobia - Fear of dirt and germs.NNecrophobia - Fear of death or dead things.Noctiphobia - Fear of the night.Nosocomephobia - Fear of hospitals.OObesophobia - Fear of gaining weight.Octophobia - Fear of the figure 8.Ombrophobia - Fear of rain.Ophidiophobia - Fear of snakes.Ornithophobia - Fear of birds.PPapyrophobia - Fear of paper.Pathophobia - Fear of disease.Pedophobia - Fear of children.Philophobia - Fear of love.Phobophobia - Fear of phobias.Podophobia - Fear of feet.Porphyrophobia - Fear of the color purple.Pteridophobia - Fear of ferns.Pteromerhanophobia - Fear of flying.Pyrophobia - Fear of fire.SScolionophobia - Fear of school.Selenophobia - Fear of the moon.Sociophobia - Fear of social evaluation.Somniphobia - Fear of sleep.TTachophobia - Fear of speed.Technophobia - Fear of technology.Tonitrophobia - Fear of thunder.Trypanophobia - Fear of injections.V-ZVenustraphobia - Fear of beautiful women.Verminophobia - Fear of germs.Wiccaphobia - Fear of witches and witchcraft.Xenophobia - Fear of strangers or foreigners.Zoophobia - Fear of animals.1. Arachnophobia: The fear of spiders. This phobia tends to affect women more than men.2. Ophidiophobia: The fear of snakes. Often attributed to evolutionary causes, personal experiences, or cultural influences.3. Acrophobia: The fear of heights. This fear can lead to anxiety attacks and avoidance of high places.4. Agoraphobia: The fear of situations in which escape is difficult. This may include crowded areas, open spaces, or situations that are likely to trigger a panic attack. People will begin avoiding these trigger events, sometimes to the point that they cease leaving their home. Approximately one third of people with panic disorder develop agoraphobia.5. Cynophobia: The fear of dogs. This phobia is often associated with specific personal experiences, such as being bitten by a dog during childhood.6. Astraphobia: The fear of thunder and lightning. Also known as Brontophobia, Tonitrophobia, or Ceraunophobia.7. Trypanophobia: The fear of injections. Like many phobias, this fear often goes untreated because people avoid the triggering object and situation.8. Social Phobias: The fear of social situations. In many cases, these phobias can become so severe that people avoid events, places, and people that are likely to trigger an anxiety attack.9. Pteromerhanophobia: The fear of flying. Often treated using exposure therapy, in which the client is gradually and progressively introduced to flying.10. Mysophobia: The fear of germs or dirt.May be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. | |
| Fear | Five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” | |
| Fear | The fear of missing out (FOMO) has become pervasive in society. Teens and adults text while driving, because the possibility of a social connection is more important than their own lives (and the lives of others). They interrupt one call to take another, even when they don’t know who’s on the other line (but to be honest, we’ve been doing this for years before caller ID). They check their Twitter stream while on a date, because something more interesting or entertaining just might be happening. | |
| Finishing Well | After 18 years of playing professional soccer, receiving global notoriety, and over 3 world cup appearances, soccer star Zinedine Zidane came out of retirement to lead his French team once again in pursuit of the World Cup. This soccer star of soccer stars heroically vaulted his team above the other competitors landing them into the apex of sport’s world stage, soccer’s World Cup. This game against the Italians was the climax of his career, an extraordinary accomplishment. After 120 minutes of play the teams remained tied at 1-1. But in the early minutes of overtime as Zidane was passing an Italian rival, he turned around ran head first into the man’s chest, hurling the man to the ground. At the climax of his career, on the world stage, in sight of the finish line and one of the greatest sports accomplishments of all time Zidane stumbled and fell hopelessly into the pit of failure. No measure of apology, no exceptional excuse could expunge his moment of weakness. Zidane would forever be declared as the champion who was not. | |
| Forgiveness | Corey TenBoom: Corey had been a young girl living in a land occupied by the ruthless anti-Semitic Nazis. She and her family hid Jews by the hundreds so that they could escape the brutal torture at the hands of heartless men. Over the course of time Corey and her sister were themselves sent an internment camp where the experienced the harsh cruelties a concentration camp life. She saw hundreds of people murdered and she and her sister suffered horribly. Corey lived through agonizing trial and was raised up by God to present the message of forgiveness and grace to the war-torn land. She went from Church to church and home to home teaching this great message of forgiveness and literally thousands of people were born into God’s kingdom. One particular day Corey was teaching one of her messages on forgiveness. There was a wonderful response that day. As she came down from the podium she began to shake the hands of the people who had been dramatically touched. As she progressed a young and exhuberant man came to her. He said, “Jesus has cleansed me from my sins. How great is it to be born into God’s kingdom.” And he stretched out his hand to shake her hand. Her hand went limp and froze like ice at here side as she realized at once that this man was one of the guards who had been at her intenerment came and who had been personally brutal to her and her sister. Overwhelmed to be in this position in her life she cried out to God for help acknowledging that she didn’t have the strength to even lift her hand to receive this man. She recounts the story and says, “It was a miracle. At once I felt a warmth flow through my being straight to my arm and I raised it up to receive this young man and in my heart forgive him for what he had done.” | Corey TenBoom |
| Forgiveness | We are the most litigious society on the face of the earth, with about 80 percent of the world's attorneys living in the United States. More people graduate from law school than from any other professional academic course of study in the entire nation. And what do attorneys do? They sue and defend, for the most part, because there is no forgiveness. We're not willing to say, "It's all right. I forgive you." And what is really toxic is our unwillingness to accept responsibility for our own actions and our unwillingness to forgive. It's worse than toxic; it's sinful. Let this not be said of us, God's people! Unforgiveness will eat you up spiritually and, in many ways, bring your spiritual life to a standstill. Unforgiveness is choosing to love hate. It produces bitterness, anger, rage, anxiety, and depression. Simply put, it is sin. Instead, we must forgive. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is like taking a piece of pottery and smashing it into a thousand pieces. There is no way it can ever be put together again. God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and truth, and forgiving of iniquity, transgressions and sin (see Exodus 34:6–7). That is our God. He forgives.You might say, "Greg, that's God. God forgives. But I'm just a person. I'm flawed. I can't forgive like that."If you want to become like Jesus, then you should reflect His character. God has said that if you confess your sin, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness (see 1 John 1:9). God has said it. And as His representative, you can do the same. | Greg Laurie |
| God, His Will | I heard the story of an elderly minister who liked to visit people in hospitals. He often would take along a little, embroidered bookmark that he carried in his Bible. On the back of the bookmark was a group of tangled threads with no apparent pattern. He would hand this bookmark, with the back facing up, to those who were hurting or upset and say, "Look at that and tell me what it says." As they looked at all the tangled threads, they would say, "I have no idea what it says. It doesn't seem to say anything." Then he said, "Now, turn it over." As they would flip that bookmark over, they saw the words "God is love." The minister would say, "Many times as we look at what God is doing, we just see tangled threads with no rhyme or reason. But from God's perspective, He is dealing with us in love, and He knows what He is doing." | |
| God, His Love | God’s love is at once the most multifaceted gem in the compendium of His qualities, the most sublime subject for the universe’s consideration, and the most significant and simple truth for a human to experience. | |
| God, His Love | God’s love is the most powerful force in heaven and on earth. | |
| God, His Love | Good that you love God – but your love for Him doesn’t forgive you, doesn’t cleanse you, doesn’t change you, doesn’t make you acceptable. HIS LOVE FOR YOU DOES. | |
| God, His Love | LOVE springs naturally from the heart of God for you. It’s His natural disposition. | |
| God, His Love | God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. | Augustine |
| God, His Love | God’s love matures our hearts as we choose to make it the most significant influence. | |
| God, His Holiness | DIVINE DILEMMA: How could a perfectly just and holy God have relationship w/ sinful human, they can’t save themselves – somehow the sin had be put away without causing death of the person which is what they eternally deserved. If only someone else could die in their place. But WHO. | |
| Good Intentions | Almost means nothing, especially in matters of the heart. | Charles Dickens |
| Guilt | Judas Iscariot tried desperately to escape his guilt. He sought religious pardon, but there was none able to give. He sought to undo his wrong by restitution of the money, but that brought no freedom. Judas sought to alleviate and escape the weight of his guilt by killing himself only to realize his guilt carried through to the next life. Guilt hung like a millstone around Judas’ neck. He was drowning seeking to untie it and free himself only to realize that his plummet would be eternal and inescapable. | |
| Hope | The most we can hope for in life is unyielding despair. | Bertrand Russell |
| Humility | Every time I would gather with the leaders of the church before a mission’s trip or a traveling teaching opportunity I would challenge them, “What happens if God takes me home?” Are you guys ready to take what God is doing and continue it? I was planning for my departure from the very onset. Why? Because I am dispensable. | |
| Humility | We learn early in life that it is easy to make fun of the person who fails. In fact, a group of otherwise disconnected individuals can quickly become a pack of familiar friends hovering like vultures over the carcass of some poor individual slain by life’s failures or missteps. I wish I could say this just happens in the world but I can’t. It happens in the church. All too often we find ourselves considering the failure of others with a critical, condemning eye. Instead of brokenness and introspection we stand aghast, and amazed, shocked that people could “behave in such a manner”. Yet the Bible declares the true way of wisdom is to humbly learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. We genuinely desire a closer walk with Christ. Inextricably connected to that desire must be a willingness to allow the Spirit of God to search our hearts, so that faults, failures, and shortcomings might be revealed. And so it is today as we learn lessons from the infamous group, the Scribes and Pharisees. Before you disassociate yourself from the depths of their failure, turn your ear to the Spirit. Carefully consider the nearness of your old-nature to theirs. And be willingly to humbly ask your Maker, “Lord, is it I?” | |
| Humility | An interviewer in England once asked Billy Graham this question saying, “Mr. Graham I have heard many more eloquent, many more learned and many more powerful speakers than you are. How is it that God has chosen you to be the evangelist to the world?” Billy Graham humbly replied, “When I get to heaven that is going to be my first question.” | Billy Graham |
| Humility | 7 great men mentioned but the word of the Lord came to John the Baptist. | |
| Humility | Winston Churchill was once asked, “Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?”“It’s quite flattering,” replied Sir Winston. “But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big.” | Winston Churchill |
| Humility | On his way to a reception held in his honor, Ulysses S. Grant got caught in a shower and offered to share his umbrella with a stranger walking in the same direction. The man said he was going to Grant’s reception out of curiosity; he had never seen the general. “I have always thought that Grant was a much overrated man,” he said. “That’s my view also,” Grant replied. | |
| Hypocrisy | New England: Every winter the couple planting plastic flowers in the ground. | |
| Joy | Joy is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope in the person of God, His promises and His principles which leads to a constant stream of gladness. | |
| Joy | Biggest threat to joy is watering down your faith with a love for this world. | |
| Joy | JOY COMES FROM KNOWING AND LIVING GOD’S PURPOSE FOR YOUR LIFE | |
| Knowledge | Epiginosis: to know via experience: I know He can transform because I am being transformed, I know He can forgive sins because my burden unforgiveness has been lifted, I know that He has given spiritual gifts I use mine, I know He fills me with His love because I have loved unlovely, I know he gives peace because his peace guards my heart. | |
| Light | A recent BBC article on the importance of light stated: humans need light to stay sane. Without light, we lose our sense of time. With this sensory deprivation comes the strangest, most unimaginable psychological effects. Darkness thrusts you into an incomprehensible sea of fear and isolation. It's easy to see things that aren't there, believe things that seemed impossible moments before. You might believe your eyes are straining so hard that you'll never see again. In fact, a BBC TV program studied a group of people with 48 hrs total light deprivation. One man said that the utter darkness caused him to completely lose his sense of time. He’d doze off and then woke up not knowing whether it was night or day. In fact, he and others started hallucinating — seeing a heap of 500 oysters, tiny cars, snakes, zebras, fighter planes, mosquitos, and even the sensation of the room taking off. OUTER DARKNESS WEEPING. | https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140514-how-extreme-isolation-warps-minds |
| Light | Spiritual Light: It means glory expressive of the divine majesty; it means purity emphasizing morality; it means truth, referring to intelligence; it means fellowship suggesting communion. | |
| Intimacy with God | Annie Hawks wrote: One day as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy with my regular household tasks. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words, “I Need Thee Every Hour,” were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me.After writing the lyrics, Hawks gave them to her pastor, Robert Lowry, who added the tune and refrain. The hymn was first published at the National Baptist Sunday School Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1872. Some years later, after the death of her husband, Hawks wrote:I did not understand at first why this hymn had touched the great throbbing heart of humanity. It was not until long after, when the shadow fell over my way, the shadow of a great loss, that I understood something of the comforting power in the words which I had been permitted to give out to others in my hour of sweet serenity and peace.I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord; No tender voice like Thine can peace afford.I need Thee, O I need Thee; Every hour I need Thee; O bless me now, my Savior, I come to Thee.I need Thee every hour, stay Thou nearby; Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh.I need Thee every hour, in joy or pain; Come quickly and abide, or life is in vain.I need Thee every hour; teach me Thy will; And Thy rich promises in me fulfill.I need Thee every hour, most Holy One; O make me Thine indeed, Thou blessèd Son. | Annie Hawks |
| Law | Paul loved the law. He lived to excel in the law (Philippians 3). But it was the very thing that he loved that also indicted him, convicted, and dogged him until he was freed through Christ. | |
| Life | LIFE: Christ given life that is spiritual, a divine gift, abundant, and fulfills the purpose of our existence. | |
| Love | Mother Teresa’s remark that the greatest disease in our modern world is the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and unloved, is often accompanied with a true and interesting story: A gentleman passed by her as she was bent over a filthy and dying man she had found lying abandoned in the gutter. Looking at the elderly lady who was embracing the poor and dirty man found in the gutter, the gentleman was so repulsed by the sight. He continued to watch in amazement as Mother Teresa tried to comfort the dying man making him lean on her chest and chasing away the flies off his body! Then the gentleman exclaimed to the lady not knowing that she was the Saint of Calcutta: “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars. Her response was both immediate and revealing: “Neither would I!" | Mother Teresa |
| Love | “Human love is a reflection of something in the divine nature itself.” | A. E. Brooke |
| Love | “We are never nearer to God than when we love.” | Clement of Alexandria |
| Love | “The energy of love discharges itself along lines which form a triangle, whose points are God, self and neighbor.” | C.H. Dodd |
| Materialism | The Pope pointed to his gorgeous Papal Palace and said, “Peter can no longer say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’ And St. Dominic replied, ‘No. And neither can he now say, ‘Rise up and walk.’” | Saint Dominic |
| Materialism | Who we are doesn’t come from what we own it comes from Having HIM . | |
| Misperception | What’s on the outside doesn’t always indicate what’s on the inside. | |
| Misperception | Things aren’t always what they same. One night I came home from teaching a Bible Study. I was famished and hadn’t eaten all day. I looked in the fridge and there was some chicken cordon bleu on a plate. They were nicely rolled and had been dipped in bread crumbs. I picked one up and like a man just bit into. To my unfortunate surprise, thought the bread crumbs were great, the chicken had yet to be cooked. | |
| Born Again | The Holy Spirit is changing you from the inside out; you’re made for a different world. | |
| Born Again | Because we have been born again God has made us for Himself and heaven. We are citizens of heaven and spiritual beings. This means our appetites will be spiritual, that there will be real opposition, and that we find our value in having the Father and the Son. | |
| Obedience | Obedience to God’s truth will keep your behavior towards others in the lane and out of the gutter. | |
| Failure | "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all." | J.K. Rowling |
| Peace | Man is not at peace with his fellow man because he is not at peace with himself. He is not at peace with himself because he is not at peace with God. | |
| Perception | Back in anatomy class we learned that because of the shape of the lenses in our eyes, whenever we look at something, the image we see is turned upside-down before that image hits our retina. This image is then translated into neural impulses and transmitted along millions of optic nerve fibers to our brains. This means that our brains receive a picture of the world flipped on its head. But being so brilliantly designed, our brains figure out very early and very quickly that the upside-down images are not the way things really are and learn the ability to interpret them as right-side up. | |
| Persistence | THE DEVIL IS GOING TO WORK THE HARDEST AGAINST YOU WHEN GOD IS JUST ABOUT TO DO THE GREATEST THING THROUGH YOU. | |
| Persistence | “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” | Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| Persistence | Your unwillingness to quit comes from God’s unwillingness to quit on you. | |
| Persistence | Thomas Edison: In his early years, teachers told Thomas Edison he was "too stupid to learn anything." Work was no better, he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, he made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before succeeding. 1st incandescent light bulb. | Thomas Edison |
| Persistence | “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” | Thomas Edison |
| Persistence | Real faith in God is what enables you to get up when you’ve been knocked down. | |
| Persistence | Adoniram Judson had just been commissioned by the newly established missions board of the Congregational Church to go to the LMS in London and secure funds for the first American foreign missionaries. He was flush with excitement as he boarded the Packet a British sailing vessel. Sailing was dangerous in 1811 especially in a British ship because of the war between Britain and France. A few days into the voyage a French gunship overtook the Packet and captured the crew and passengers. Adoniram was thrown into the cargo hold with the other prisoners. Their fate was unknown but the French were known for throwing their captives overboard to drown to death or to be eaten by sharks. The cargo hold was dark and dismal. There were no chamber pots so the smell quickly became rancid. To make matters worse they were hit by a fierce storm which made all the prisoners sick. The cargo hold reeked of vomit. Adoniram began to question God. He was God’s servant, God’s missionary. He had important business on behalf of the kingdom of God, how could God allow this to happen. As he wondered he decided in his mind that this was God’s plan for him and somehow God would use it for his glory. Adoniram pulled out his Latin, Hebrew and English Bibles. The French doctor was making his usual rounds, Adoniram had tried many conversations with this man but to no avail since Adoniram didn’t speak French. But this time the doctor noticed the Latin and Hebrew Bibles. He spoke to Adoniram in Latin. Adoniram explained he was an American and not British. That evening he was let out of the cargo hold and dined with the captain. | |
| Persistence | As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Elie Wiesel, once said, "Nobody is stronger…than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him." | Elie Wiesel |
| Persistence | Failed in business 22Ran for Legislature--defeated 23Again failed in business 24Elected to Legislature 25Sweetheart died 26Had a nervous breakdown 27Defeated for Speaker 29Defeated for Elector 31Defeated for Congress 34Elected to Congress 37Defeated for Congress 39Defeated for Senate 46Defeated for Vice President 47Defeated for Senate 49 Elected President of the United States 51That's the record of Abraham Lincoln. | |
| Persistence | From the diary of John Wesley. . .Sunday, A.M., May 5 Preached in St. Anne's. Was asked not to come back anymore.Sunday, P.M., May 5 Preached in St. John's. Deacons said "Get out and stay out."Sunday, A.M., May 12 Preached in St. Jude's. Can't go back there, either.Sunday, A.M., May 19 Preached in St. Somebody Else's. Deacons called special meeting and said I couldn't return.Sunday, P.M., May 19 Preached on street. Kicked off street.Sunday, A.M., May 26 Preached in meadow. Chased out of meadow as bull was turned loose during service.Sunday, A.M., June 2 Preached out at the edge of town. Kicked off the highway.Sunday, P.M., June 2 Afternoon, preached in a pasture. Ten thousand people came out to hear me. | John Wesley |
| Persistence | Young William Wilberforce was discouraged one night in the early 1790s after another defeat in his 10 year battle against the slave trade in England. Tired and frustrated, he opened his Bible and began to leaf through it. A small piece of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. It was a letter written by John Wesley shortly before his death. Wilberforce read it again: "Unless the divine power has raised you up... I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that (abominable practice of slavery), which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His might." | John Wesley |
| Persistence | One day George Muller began praying for five of his friends. After many months, one of them came to the Lord. Ten years later, two others were converted. It took 25 years before the fourth man was saved. Muller persevered in prayer until his death for the fifth friend, and throughout those 52 years he never gave up hoping that he would accept Christ! His faith was rewarded, for soon after Muller's funeral the last one was saved. | |
| Persistence | It is said that Thomas Edison performed 50,000 (sic) experiments before he succeeded in producing a storage battery. We might assume the famous inventor would have had some serious doubts along the way. But when asked if he ever became discouraged working so long without results, Edison replied, "Results? Why, I know 50,000 things that won't work." | Thomas Edison |
| Persistence | In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it. Yet, when we must put aside our wrath, quench our envy, soften our anger, offer our prayers, and show a disposition which is reasonable, mild, kindly, and loving, how could poverty stand in our way? For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice. Almsgiving above all else requires money, but even this shines with a brighter luster when the alms are given from our poverty. The widow who paid in the two mites was poorer than any human, but she outdid them all. | St. John Chrysostom |
| Prayer | (This is a story of a little boy who wanted a bicycle but didn’t know how to pray for one.) One day, a little boy was watching a television program of a traditional church service and saw how the minister prayed. So, at the end of the day, the boy got on his knees and prayed, “Lord, if it is in Your Sovereign will and in Your eternal plan that I can get myself a bicycle in Your time and according to Your will, would you please get me a bicycle, I pray? Amen." Two days later he was not sure if that was a confident prayer. So, he turned on the television to watch another type of church service, and at the end of that day he got on his knees and prayed, “Lord I declare my need for a bicycle. And I ask that it be a nice blue bicycle and delivered to my home within 24 hours. I lay claim to it! Amen." He still was not sure if he did it right, so, he kept wondering. Then one evening, he looked around the room and saw a statue of Mary on a table. He took the statue and disappeared. His mother saw him and wondered what he was up to. So, late that night she returned and found in the place of the statue a note reading, “Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again...” | |
| Prayer | "You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” | A.J. Gordon |
| Prayer | Early in the morning on the 4th day of our mission trip to New Orleans we had prayed and asked God to provide for divine appointments for that day. We were traveling to visit a Christian man we had helped after the great hurricane Katrina that ravaged the area. In the most disconcerting way we could not find his house. After traveling up and down roads we determined to find a phone book to ascertain the man's address but in New Orleans no pay phones have phone books. We randomly pulled into a gas station, saw a phone with no phone book and prepared to pull out when a young man covered with tattoos saw the relief sign on our truck and asked us what it was about. We told him we were in the area to share the love God. The young man broke down in tears exclaiming he had just left a teen challenge after being there for 3 weeks. He had returned to the drug life but was not broken again waiting for his mother. We exhorted the young man that Jesus wanted him to return to teen challenge and complete the program and that he had to give his whole life to God and we prayed earnestly together. The Lord had predetermined us to be at that place at that moment though from every angle it appeared that disappointment would prevail. | |
| Prayer | A man in Cincinnati had preached his sermon and sank back in his chair, when he felt impelled to make another appeal. A boy at the back of the church lifted his hand. The minister left the pulpit and went down to him and said, “Tell me about yourself.” The boy said, “I live in New York. I am a prodigal. I have disgraced my father’s name and broken my mother’s heart. I ran away and told them I would never come back until I became a Christian or they brought me home dead.” That night there went from Cincinnati a letter telling his father and mother that the boy had turned to God. Seven days later in a black bordered envelop, a reply came which read: "My dear boy, when I got the news that you had received Jesus Christ the sky was overcast; your father was dead." Then the letter went on to tell how the father had prayed for his prodigal son with his last breath, and concluded, “You are a Christian tonight because your old father would not let you go.” | |
| Prayer | A 14 year old boy was given a task by his father. A group of boys came along just then and lured the boy away with them, and so the work went undone. But the father came home that evening ands aid, “Frank, did you do the work that I gave you?” “Yes, sir,” said Frank. He told an untruth; and his father knew it, but said nothing. It troubled the boy, but he went to bed as usual. Next morning his mother said to him,” Your father did not sleep all last night.” “Why didn’t he sleep?” asked Frank. His mother said, “He spent the whole night praying for you.” This sent the arrow into his heart. He was deeply convicted of his sin and knew no rest until he had gotten right with God. Long afterward when the boy became Bishop Warne, he said that his decision for Christ came from his father’ prayer that night. He saw his father keeping his lonely and sorrowful vision praying for his boy, and it broke his heart.” He said, “I can never be sufficiently thankful to him for that prayer.” | |
| Prayer | "Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt them May have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God’s heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; they outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world." | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer | That man is the most immortal who has done the most and the best praying. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer | It is true that the mightiest successes that come to God’s cause are created and carried on in prayer. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer | We can do all things by God’s aid, and can have the whole of His aid by asking. The Gospel, in its success and power depends on our ability to pray. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer | Prayer is not a meaningless function or duty to be crowded into the busy or the weary ends of the day, and we are not obeying our Lord’s command when we content ourselves iwht a few minutes upon our knees in the morning rush or late at night when the faculties, tired with the tasks of the day, call out for rest. God is always within call, it is true; His ear is ever attentive to the cry of His child, but we can never get to know Him if we use the vehicle of prayer as we used the telephone, for a few words of hurried conversation. Intimacy requires development. We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him, by brief and fragmentary and unconsidered repetitions of intercessions that are requests for personal favors and nothing more. That is not the way in which we can come into communication with heaven’s King. The goal of prayer is the ear of God, a goal that can only be reached by patient and continuous waiting upon Him, pouring out our heart to Him and permitting Him to speak to us. Only by so doing can we expect to know Him, and as we come to know Him better we shall spend more time in His presence and find that presence a constant and increasing delight. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer | To have prayers answered means you have to know God’s will. | |
| Prayer | The streaming wounds of Jesus are the sure guarantees for answered prayer. | C.H. Spurgeon |
| Prayer | The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer. | F.B. Meyer |
| Intercession | A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island. The two survivors, not knowing what else to do, agree that they had no other recourse but to pray to God. However, to find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island. The first thing the first man prayed for was food. The next morning, the first man saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the land, and he was able to eat its fruit. The other man's parcel of land remained barren. After a week, the first man was lonely and he decided to pray for a wife. The next day, another ship was wrecked, and the only survivor was a woman who swam to his side of the land. On the other side of the island, there was nothing. Soon the first man prayed for a house, clothes, more food. The next day, like magic, all of these were given to him. However, the second man still had nothing. Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that his wife and he could leave the island. In the morning, he found a ship docked at his side of the island. The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island. He considered the other man unworthy to receive God's blessings, since none of his prayers had been answered. As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from Heaven booming, "Why are you leaving your companion on the island?" "My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them," the first man answered. "His prayers were all unanswered, and so he does not deserve anything." "You are mistaken!" the voice rebuked him. "He had only one prayer, which I answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings." "Tell me," the first man asked the voice, "what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?" "He prayed that all your prayers be answered." | |
| Prayer | Answered prayer is the interchange of love between the Father and his child. | A. Murray |
| Prayer, Necessity of | Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer. Most people consider the exercise a fatiguing ceremony, which they are justified in shorten as much as possible. Even those whose profession of fears lead them to pray, pray with such weakness and wanderings of mind that their prayers, far from drawing down blessings, only increase their condemnation. | Fenelon |
| Prayer, Necessity of | Everything depends upon prayer, and yet we neglect it not only to our own spiritual hurt but also to the delay and injury of our Lord’s cause upon the earth. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer, Necessity of | In spite of the benefits and blessings which flow from communion with God, the sad confession must be made that we are not praying much. A very small number comparatively lead in prayer at the meetings. Fewer still pray with their families. Fewer still are in the habit of praying regularly in their closets. Meetings specially for prayer are as rare as frost in June. | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer, Persistence in | Our whole being must be in our praying; like John Knox, we must say and feel, “Give me Scotland, or I die.” | E.M. Bounds |
| Prayer, Persistence in | Too often we get fainthearted and quite praying at the point where we ought to begin. We let go at the very point where we should hold on strongest. Our prayers are weak because they are not impassioned by an unfailing and resistless will. | E.M. Bounds |
| Power, of Prayer | Chrysostom: “The potency of prayer hath subdued the strength of fire; it had bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the gates of heaven, assuaged diseases, repelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. Prayer is an all efficient panoply , a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.” | John Chrysostom |
| Power, of Prayer | Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities; they are limited only by the omnipotence of God. | E.M. Bounds |
| Tolerance | Tolerance: respecting another persons right to have a belief - tolerate a persons right to have their own beliefs- Dictionary: acceptance of different views- Today: To endorse or celebrate All ideas are equally valid | |
| Tolerance | Everyone has a right to hold a belief but that doesn’t mean that what they believe is true. | |
| Pride | Of all the causes which conspire to blind, man’s erring judgment and misguide the mind; what the weak head with the strongest bias rules, is pride, the never failing vice of fools. | Alexander Pope |
| Pride | A young executive on his first day was standing at the water cooler with someone he believed to be a fellow female worker. He began to talk about the various things he would change if he were in charge of the company. He boasted of his college degree and innovative thinking. He berated the CEO as a complete imbecile as anachronistic and incapable of making a good decision if her life depended on it. As he finished his ranting and raving he looked at the woman and asked what she did for the company. She replied, “I am the CEO of this company.” | |
| Pride | The story is told of the great heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. Who wasn’t exactly known for his humility. He branded himself as the greatest. When he boxed the way he did you didn’t argue with him either. He was on a flight when it hit moderate turbulence. (Moderate turbulence means your’e being tossed around.) The Captain announced, “all of you immediately fasten your seat belt.” Everyone complied except Ali. The flight attendant came over and said to him, “Excuse me sir would you please fasten your seatbelt?” He said, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” She didn’t miss a beat and said, “Superman don’t need no airplane either.” | |
| Pride | Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow.""Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.The lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.The captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: 'We are on a collision course, advise you change course twenty degrees.'"Back came the signal, "Advisable for you to change course twenty degrees."The captain said, "Send: "I'm a Captain, change course twenty degrees.'""I'm a Seaman Second-Class," came the reply. "You had better change course twenty degrees."By that time the Captain was furious. He spat out, "Send: 'I'm a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.'"Back came the flashing light, "I'm a lighthouse."We changed course. | |
| Reality | “What is all that fame and flattery? What is the point of spending your life chasing fame and wealth, when in the end you die and have to answer to God for the way you have lived? It could just as easily be me lying there, and George wiping my brow. What would happen if I were to die now? Where would I go?” | C.T. Studd |
| Reality | "Know thyself,” Socrates would say to his disciples. | Socrates |
| Reality | “Our world view is not what we see; it is what we see with.” | |
| Reality | Most if not all of Thomas Aquinas’s schoolmates considered him to be dumb beyond reconciliation. Yet his friend, professor and spiritual leader Albertus Magnus said in response to them, “You call him a Dumb Ox; I tell you this Dumb Ox will bellow so loud that his bellowings will fill the world.” | Albert Magnus |
| Reason | Reason is a good servant but a horrible master. | |
| Resurrection | The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single greatest revol. in the history of the world. | |
| Resurrection | “The resurrection is a fact better attested than any event recorded in any history, whether ancient or modern.” | C.H. Spurgeon |
| Resurrection | “The resurrection of Jesus changes the face of death for all His people. Death is no longer a prison, but a passage into God’s presence. Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!” | Clarence Hall |
| Resurrection | “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.” | N.T. Wright |
| Revolution | Revolution: a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system. | |
| Revolution | The book of Acts is not just a history of the early church. It chronicles the seeds of the revolution which are still being planted today through God’s people. | |
| Sanctification | Sanctification: A continuing change worked by God in us, freeing us from sinful habits and forming in us Christ like affections, dispositions, and virtues. | |
| Secrecy | They may very well be right. Though not all truths need to be shared with everyone—or even anyone—to maintain a healthy and happy life, concealing some truths is like swallowing slow-acting poison: one's insides gradually rot. How does one tell the difference between the kind of secret one should keep and the kind one shouldn't? Perhaps a good guide would be this: the kind of secrets that shouldn't be kept are those that allow us to behave in a way that causes harm to others or to ourselves. All-to-common examples of this include addiction (to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, and so on) as well as infidelities (to spouses, business partners, friends, and so on). Keeping these kind of secrets allows the detrimental behavior to continue. Confess such secrets to the right people and it becomes much harder for the harm such secrets enable to continue. | |
| Self-Deception | Many years ago, there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on being well dressed. He cared nothing about reviewing his soldiers, going to the theatre, only to show off his new clothes. He had a coat for every hour of the day. In the great city where he lived, life was always happy. Every day many strangers came to town, and among them one day came two swindlers. They let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. The clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid. "Those would be just the clothes for me," thought the Emperor. "If I wore them, I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools. Yes, I certainly must get some of the stuff woven for me right away." He paid the two swindlers a large sum of money to start work at once.They set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. "I'd like to know how those weavers are getting on with the cloth," the Emperor thought, but he felt slightly uncomfortable when he remembered that those who were unfit for their position would not be able to see the fabric. It couldn't have been that he doubted himself, yet he thought he'd rather send someone else to see how things were going. The whole town knew about the cloth's peculiar power, and all were impatient to find out how stupid their neighbors were."I'll send my honest old minister to the weavers," the Emperor decided. "He'll be the best one to tell me how the material looks, for he's a sensible man and no one does his duty better."So the honest old minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working away at their empty looms."Heaven help me," he thought as his eyes flew wide open, "I can't see anything at all". But he did not say so. Both the swindlers begged him to be so kind as to come near to approve the excellent pattern, the beautiful colors. They pointed to the empty looms, and the poor old minister stared as hard as he dared. He couldn't see anything, because there was nothing to see. "Heaven have mercy," he thought. "Can it be that I'm a fool? I'd have never guessed it, and not a soul must know. Am I unfit to be the minister? It would never do to let on that I can't see the cloth.""Don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it," said one of the weavers."Oh, it's beautiful -it's enchanting." The old minister peered through his spectacles. I can’t wait to tell the emperor and so he did. The Emperor presently sent another trustworthy official to see how the work progressed and how soon it would be ready. The same thing happened to him that had happened to the minister. He looked and he looked, but as there was nothing to see in the looms he couldn't see anything. "Isn't it a beautiful piece of goods?" the swindlers asked him, as they displayed and described their imaginary pattern. "I know I'm not stupid," the man thought, "so it must be that I'm unworthy of my good office. That's strange. I mustn't let anyone find it out, though." So, he praised the material he did not see. To the Emperor he said, "It held me spellbound." All the town was talking of this splendid cloth, and the Emperor wanted to see it for himself while it was still in the looms. Attended by a band of chosen men, among whom were his two old trusted officials He found them weaving with might and main, but without a thread in their looms. "Magnificent," said the two officials already duped. "Just look, Your Majesty, what colors! What a design!" They pointed to the empty looms, each supposing that the others could see the stuff."What's this?" thought the Emperor. "I can't see anything. This is terrible! Am I a fool? Am I unfit to be the Emperor? What a thing to happen to me of all people! - Oh! It's very pretty," he said. "It has my highest approval." And he nodded approbation at the empty loom. Nothing could make him say that he couldn't see anything. His whole retinue stared and stared. One saw no more than another, but they all joined the Emperor in exclaiming, "Oh! It's very pretty," and they advised him to wear clothes made of this wonderful cloth especially for the great procession he was soon to lead. Before the procession the swindlers sat up all night and burned more than six candles, to show how busy they were finishing the Emperor's new clothes. They pretended to take the cloth off the loom. They made cuts in the air with huge scissors. And at last, they said, "Now the Emperor's new clothes are ready for him."Then the Emperor himself came with his noblest noblemen, and the swindlers each raised an arm as if they were holding something. They said, "These are the trousers, here's the coat, and this is the mantle," naming each garment. "All of them are as light as a spider web. One would almost think he had nothing on, but that's what makes them so fine.""Exactly," all the noblemen agreed, though they could see nothing, for there was nothing to see. "If Your Imperial Majesty will condescend to take your clothes off," said the swindlers, "we will help you on with your new ones here in front of the long mirror."The Emperor undressed, and the swindlers pretended to put his new clothes on him, one garment after another. They took him around the waist and seemed to be fastening something - that was his train-as the Emperor turned round and round before the looking glass. "How well Your Majesty's new clothes look. Aren't they becoming!" He heard on all sides, "That pattern, so perfect! Those colors, so suitable! It is a magnificent outfit."Then the minister of public processions announced: "Your Majesty's canopy is waiting outside." "Well, I'm supposed to be ready," the Emperor said, and turned again for one last look in the mirror. "It is a remarkable fit, isn't it?" He seemed to regard his costume with the greatest interest. The noblemen who were to carry his train stooped low and reached for the floor as if they were picking up his mantle. Then they pretended to lift and hold it high. They didn't dare admit they had nothing to hold. So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success."But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said."Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on.""But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So, he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all. | |
| Serving | During the war a church in Strasburg, Germany, was totally destroyed; but a statue of Christ which stood by the altar was almost unharmed. Only the hands of the statue were missing. When the church was rebuilt, a famous sculptor offered to make new hands; but, after considering the matter, the members decided to let it stand as it was—without hands. “For,” they said, “Christ has no hands but our hands to do His work on earth. If we don’t feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, entertain the stranger, visit the imprisoned, and clothe the naked, who will?” Christ is depending on us to do the very things which He did while upon earth. My friend, if the gospel we preach does not have a social application, if it will not work effectively in the work-a-day world, then it is not the Gospel of Christ. | |
| Sin | The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, but the most empirically verifiable. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Sin | Each man lives his own life, and pays his own price for living it. The only pity is one has to pay so often for a single fault. One pays over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with many Destiny never closes her accounts. | Oscar Wilde – Dorian Gray (Dorian wild, frenzied seeks to escape his guilt and inner torment with an opium binge.) |
| Sin | There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fiber of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven it was as a rebel that he fell. | Oscar Wilde – Dorian Gray (see aforementioned note |
| Sin | Sin: 5 Greek words – missing mark, unrighteousness, lawlessness, “It is defiance, arrogance, the desire to be equal with God, the assertion of human independence over against God in matters of reason, morality and culture. In short instead of allowing God to be our God it is asserting ourselves as God’s god.” | |
| Sin | For several decades, we psychologists have looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from sin as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free from sin that is to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful is to court the danger of also becoming lost. This danger I believe is betoken by the widespread interest in existentialism, in becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our very deepest sense of our self hood and identity, and with neurotics themselves find ourselves asking, “Who am I, what is my deepest destiny and what does living really mean?” | Hobart Mauer (Harvard, Yale, President American Psychologist Assoc.) |
| Sin | In 1960, Israeli undercover agents orchestrated the daring kidnapping of one of the worst of the Holocaust’s masterminds, Adolf Eichmann. After capturing him in his South American hideout, they transported him to Israel to stand trial. There, prosecutors called a string of former concentration camp prisoners as witnesses. One was a small haggard man named Yehiel Dinur, who had miraculously escaped death in Auschwitz. On his day to testify, Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man in the bulletproof glass booth – the man who had murdered Dinur’s friends, personally executed a number of Jews, and presided over the slaughter of millions more. As the eyes of the two men met – victim and murderous tyrant – the courtroom fell silent, filled with the tension of the confrontation. But no one was prepared for what happened next. Yehiel Dinur began to shout and sob, collapsing to the floor. Was he overcome by hatred? By the horrifying memories? By the evil incarnate in Eichmann’s face? No. As he later explained in a riveting 60 Minutes interview, it was because Eichmann was not the demonic personification of evil that Dinur had expected. Rather, he was an ordinary man, just like anyone else. And in that one instant, Dinur came to a stunning realization that sin and evil are the human condition. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I am capable to do this … exactly like he. ”Dinur’s remarkable statements caused Mike Wallace to turn to the camera and ask the audience the most painful of all questions: “How was it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted? Was he a monster? A madman? Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying? Was he normal? Yehiel Dinur’s shocking conclusion? “Eichmann is in all of us.” | Yehiel Dinur |
| Sin | Susanna Wesley told her young son, John, "If you would judge of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of pleasure, then take this simple rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things--that to you is sin." | Susanna Wesley |
| Sin | Billy Graham: "We’re suffering from only one disease in the world. Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem. We need to get the heart changed, the heart transformed."... | Billy Graham |
| Sin | D.L. MOODY: Approached one day by a man who claimed to have no sin in his life: ’Well, I would like to ask your wife about that’ | D.L. Moody |
| Sin | Sin is blinding. When we yield to sin it we become so engrossed in it and so blind spiritually. The angels went to Sodom to warn Lot of the impending destruction of the city. The men of the city had gathered outside of Lot’s house. They were so consumed in their sin. They wanted to know the men who had come to town carnally or physically. Lot tried to reason with the men but they were unreasonable. They pressed against Lot to do him harm and the men sought to hurt him pressing him against the door. The angels drew Lot into the house and struck the men with blindness. But in spite of being struck with blindness the men were still grasping for the door. In fact, they grew weary of tryingto find a way to get in. They were so blinded, so filled with rage and so filled with lust that being struck with blindness didn’t even get their attention. | |
| Sin | A lady’s sick of her husband’s drinking, so she decides to teach him a lesson. She dresses up like Satan, and when her husband walks in from being out all night, she jumps out from behind the sofa and screams. He says, "You don’t scare me. I’m married to your sister." | |
| Sin | There is the story of two brothers who were notoriously immoral. They were synonymous with the vice that had overtaken them. When one of them very suddenly died, the surviving brother went to the local pastor and asked him to perform the burial service. He offered him an enormous sum of money if, in his eulogy, he would refer to his deceased brother as a saint. After much pondering, the pastor agreed. As the funeral service came to an end, the pastor (in the thick of his description of the departed man) said, “The man we have come to bury was a thief. In fact, he deserves every vile description the mind can muster. He was a depraved immoral, profligate, lewd obscene, hateful, vicious, liscentious, and he scum of the earth. But compared to his brother he was a saint!” | |
| Sin | Ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil greatHere may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimateMark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful loadTis the word the lord’s anointed, Son of Man and Son of God | Thomas Kelly, "Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted" |
| Sin | “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Sincerity | June 6th - 75th ANNIVERSARY OF DDAY / NORMANDY – EPIC BATTLE. 1940’s 60 million Germans representing the vast majority of the population supported Hitler 5.3 million died for the Third Reich You can’t be any more sincere and sincerely wrong than that. | |
| Sincerity | Sincerity is not the measure of truth. The measure of truth is whether or not what you believe is actually true. Truth is the measure of truth. | |
| Spiritual Warfare | ONE OF THE MOST STUNNING VICTORIES in the annals of warfare occurred in 1991, with the defeat of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Kuwait during the Gulf War. Military historians tell us that one of the most important reasons that war was won so decisively (Allied losses: 149 versus Iraqi losses of 100,000 or more) and quickly (only 100 hours) was that the allied forces had a clear, in-depth understanding of Saddam Hussein's military strategy and were able to thwart the Iraqi dictator at every turn. When the military commanders of the allied coalition learned that Saddam planned simply to replay the same strategy he used in the 1980-88 war with Iran, they knew exactly how to defeat him. The Allied generals, led by General Norman Schwarzkopf, devised a strategy of encirclement. Even though Saddam's army outnumbered the coalition forces two to one and were well dug into their desert fortifications, the allied coalition used a combination of superior placement, superior firepower and technology, speed, and misdirection to defeat Iraq. While U.S. Marines conspicuously practiced for a seaborne invasion along the Kuwaiti coast, drawing Saddam's attention in the wrong direction, the main coalition force was massed for an invasion across the desert. Knowing the exact location of Saddam's tanks and artillery, the coalition pounded those locations with everything from bombers to helicopters. Knowing that Saddam's forces were dug in behind sand berms and other entrenchments, allied troops practiced bulldozing and storming similar desert barricades until they could do it in their sleep. Once the war began, Iraqi troops began surrendering so eagerly that the Allies didn't know where to put them all. In one case, a pair of Iraqi armored vehicles encountered a lone U.S. soldier whose vehicle was stuck in the sand. The soldier expected to be shot or captured but instead, the Iraqis surrendered to him and helped him get his vehicle unstuck! The story of the 100-hour war in the Persian Gulf is an apt metaphor to describe our spiritual warfare against Satan. Though the devil would have us believe he is invincible, his cause has already been doomed by the cross of Christ. If we understand his strategy, the victory will be ours. In the end, we will have the honor of standing with our Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Jesus, and hear him declare that this raging tyrant, the devil, was no match for the forces of heaven. In spiritual warfare as in human warfare, the key to victory is to know your enemy and know his strategies. | |
| Spiritual Warfare | ROBERT THE BRUCE was king of Scotland from 1306 to 1329. Early in his reign, King Edward I of England invaded his nation, defeated his army, and forced him into hiding. While on the run, Robert the Bruce took refuge in a cave. Completely disheartened, the Scottish king lay by a fire in the cave, ready to resign himself to complete defeat and the loss of his kingdom. But then, in the flickering firelight, he noticed a spider on the cave wall, spinning a web. The spider repeatedly attempted to secure the web, then failed, attempted again, then failed. Finally, the spider was able to anchor the web, making it strong and secure. In the persistence of the spider, the Scottish king saw a metaphor of his own struggle against the English invader. He decided he would not allow himself to be defeated by past failures he had to continue the fight for Scottish freedom. Robert the Bruce left his cave, led his troops across the field of battle, and defeated the English invaders at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. He continued to persevere for the next fourteen years until he finally won Scottish independence in 1328. No battle was ever won without courage, perseverance, and strength. And that is the challenge before us, clearly sounded in Ephesians 6. Paul calls us to be strong in the Lord. He calls us to understand the nature of our enemy, those wicked spirits in high places who lie behind the insoluble problem of human evil. And he calls us to put on our armor and join the battle. | |
| Spiritual Warfare | There is the story of a Christian lady, Edith Miller and her family The lived in Waltham Massachusetts. Edith’s husband moved to Japan to live. He faithfully corresponded with his wife and his children for a time, letters would come regularly. Suddenly there was a change. The letters stopped coming the family didn’t understand why the correspondence had stopped. Then a letter came. It said, “You’re not going to believe what has happened. No matter how I tell you this its going to break you’re heart. I’ve fallen in love with a girl back here and I won’t be coming home.: Edith was broken. She grieved for days keeping the story to herself until one day her little daughter came t her. She said,”Mummy what’s wrong something must be wrong. Why doesn’t daddy write anymore. Is he not coming back?” And the mom said, “No honey daddy won’t be coming back.” And the little boy answered. He was so filled with the capacity of God to believe. He said, “Mommy just because daddy doesn’t love us doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed to love him anymore. Her answer, “No I guess it doesn’t.” He said, “Would you please tell daddy to continue writing to us. We want to love him and we want to write to him.” He got married to a 15 year old servant girl. He continue writing the letters. He had children and would send pictures of the children. With every letter she received Edith may as well have had a sword pierce her heart. Finally there was a letter that would constrain credulity. He wrote, “I have been stricken with cancer. I have not long to live and I am about to die. And since I don’t’ have enough in savings would you consider it to put aside some money every month and said it to my wife and children. They will be poor and unable to survive. And as she went in utter revolt the punishment in her heart began to recede by the grace of God. She wrote back and said, “Listen I don’t have enough money for my own children to survive, but if you will consider sending them here to America I will teach them the language so that they will be able to stand on their own two feet. The family arrived, she saw the family of the betrayed love and was pierced even more in her heart. But she set her feeling aside and began to minister to this family. Soon this family was able to provide for themselves and be self sustaining. As she closes her testimony she says these words, “In the dark dreary hellish situation I thanked God for the opportunity to share the love of Christ in this most miserable setting.” Only Christ is able to bring such light in the face of such dark evil. | |
| Spiritual Warfare | Conversion has made our lives a battlefield and a believer can be known by their inward warfare as much as by their inward peace. | |
| Surrender | Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Search me and try me, Savior today! Wash me just now, Lord, wash me just now, as in thy presence humbly I bow. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Wounded and weary, help me I pray! Power, all power, surely is thine! Touch me and heal me, Savior divine! Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Hold o'er my being absolute sway. Fill with thy Spirit till all shall see Christ only, always, living in me! | Adelaide A. Pollard, "Have Thine Own Way, Lord" |
| Surrender | Jesus called people to take His yoke upon Him and learn of Him. A master and his ox would become so tuned to each other that they worked in absolute unison with one another. The Lord is gentle and desires us to be under his yoke, learning of him, in total unison with Him so that His desires are known intuitively to us. | |
| Suffering | Taken by the Apostle Paul to a dissolving Roman Empire, the Cross ushers in Christendom’s two thousand years; clutched in dying hands, it makes death beautiful; as Pastor Bonhoeffer put it., a beginning rather than an end, which teaches all of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear that in suffering we learn and live, whereas if suffering were to be eliminated from the experience of living, as some twentieth-century minds have considered possible, far from thereby enhancing our mortal existence, existence would become futile and unbearable. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Temptation | Temptation is a tug at the human mind or heart for the destruction of the soul. | |
| Truth | Finding one of her students making faces at others on the playground, Ms. Smith stopped to gently reprove the child. Smiling sweetly, the Sunday School teacher said, "Bobby, when I was a child, I was told that if I made ugly faces, it would freeze and I would stay like that." Bobby looked up and replied, "Well, Ms. Smith, you can't say you weren't warned." | |
| Truth | Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced, Abraham Lincoln said, "Well, let’s see, how many legs has a cow?" "Four, of course," came the reply disgustedly. "That’s right," agreed Lincoln. "Now suppose you call the cow’s tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?" "Why, five, of course," was the confident reply. "Now, that’s where you’re wrong," said Lincoln. "Calling a cow’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg." | |
| Truth | You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? | |
| Truth | George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was speaking to a man about his soul. He asked the man, “Sir, what do you believe?” “I believe what my church believes,” the man replied respectfully. “And what does your church believe?” “The same thing I believe.” “And what do both of you believe?” the preacher inquired again. “We both believe the same thing!” was the only reply he could get. | |
| Wisdom | This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to poleAnd leads you to believe a lie, when you see with, not through the eye. | William Blake |
| Deception | You have heard the story of Jose Rivera the famous outlaw of Mexico. He had been pillaging small towns all along the northern border of Mexico and even into Texas. The towns had gathered together to hire a very large Sheriff do go and get their money and put and end to Rivera’s criminal behavior. So, the Sheriff had been searching in this small town and he entered one of the local cantinas. He went to you a young man sitting in the corner and said, “Have you seen Jose Rivera?” The young man said in broken English , “Yes sir he’s right over there.” So the Sheriff went over with gun drawn and said to the man, “Are you Jose Rivera?” and the man shrugged his shoulders indicating that he didn’t understand English. So, the Sheriff called over the young man whom he first approached and said to the young man, “You interpret for me, and tell him word for word the things that I say.” So the sheriff said to Jose through the interpreter, “Are you Jose Rivera?” The man answered through the interpretor, “Yes.” So the sheriff said, “If you don’t’ tell me where all the money is that you stole I’m going to put a bullet through your head right here and now.” So the interpreter said this to Jose, who began to tell the interpreter the following. “Go down the street to the end, turn right, walk for a few hundred yards to a well. The well is covered with a concrete slab. Just remove the slab and underneath it you’ll find the hundreds and thousands of dollars that we’ve stolen over the last few years. The interpreter listened for a minute while Jose was speaking, thought very carefully and then turned to the Sheriff and said, “Sorry sir, he just refuses to tell you where the money is hidden.” | |
| Deception | DECEIVE: Act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. | |
| Worship | “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose—all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.” | Archbishop William Temple |
| Youth | Youth Worker Journal: A youth worker relates this story. For the first few months after Nicole graduated from high school, we stayed in touch. But by that fall, she had stopped returning my calls. She had stopped coming to our church, claiming that the college ministry was boring…Three years later, I ran into Nicole at a mall near our church. She wasn’t alone. She was pushing a stroller. After we hugged, she somewhat timidly introduced me to her nine-month-old son and told me she’d lost contact with her son’s father. When I asked her if she ever went to church, she said she wasn’t into that God stuff anymore…We’d shared four years of life together. We’d talked about Jesus at church and at coffeehouses, talked about what it meant to follow him…We all have our students who graduate from our youth ministries and seem to graduate from following God. We all have our students who walked the narrow path in high school but somehow made a U-turn and stumbled, or maybe even sprinted in the opposite direction.Current trends should leave parents and youth workers uneasy. According to various studies, between 69%-94% of Christian youth leave the church after entering college. And based on a UCLA study, 52% of college freshmen say they frequently attended a religious service before attending college, but by their junior year, that number is down to 29%. If that isn’t enough, data uncovered by The Center for Youth and Family Ministry (CYFM) at Fuller Seminary offers troubling information for any concerned Christian adult. In 2004, CYFM sent a survey to 234 students who graduated from the same youth group. Out of the 69 who responded, 100% of them had consumed alcohol, 69% had been involved in a sexual encounter (oral sex, sexual intercourse, or hooking up), and 20% reported having 40 sexual encounters (with the same or multiple partners) in the last 12 months. | |
| Jesus | Have you recognized yet that Jesus is the answer and we just need a PROBLEM to discover it. | |
| Jesus | Seven Way KingMy King was born King. The Bible says He’s a Seven Way King. He’s the King of the Jews – that’s a racial King. He’s the King of Israel – that’s a National King. He’s the King of righteousness. He’s the King of the ages. He’s the King of Heaven. He’s the King of glory. He’s the King of kings and He is the Lord of lords. Now that’s my King. Well I wonder if you know Him. Do you know Him? Don’t try to mislead me. Do you know my King? David said the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament show His handiwork. My King is the only one whom there are no means of measure can define His limitless love. No far seeing telescope can bring into visibility the coastline of His shore of supplies. No barriers can hinder Him from pouring out His blessing. Well, well, He’s enduringly strong. He’s entirely sincere. He’s eternally steadfast. He’s immortally graceful. He’s imperially powerful. He’s impartially merciful. That’s my King. He’s God’s Son. He’s the sinner’s saviour. He’s the centrepiece of civilization. He stands alone in Himself. He’s august. He’s unique. He’s unparalleled. He’s unprecedented. He’s supreme. He’s pre-eminent. Well, He’s the loftiest idea in literature. He’s the highest personality in philosophy. He’s the supreme problem in high criticism. He’s the fundamental doctrine of proved theology. He’s the carnal necessity of spiritual religion. That’s my King. He’s the miracle of the age. He’s the superlative of everything good that you choose to call Him. Well, He’s the only one able to supply all of our needs simultaneously. He supplies strength for the weak. He’s available for the tempted and the tried. He sympathizes and He saves. He’s strong God and He guides. He heals the sick. He cleanses the lepers. He forgives sinners. He discharged debtors. He delivers the captives. He defends the feeble. He blesses the young. He serves the unfortunate. He regards the aged. He rewards the diligent and He beautifies the meek. Do you know Him? Well, my King is the key of knowledge. He’s the wellspring of wisdom. He’s the doorway of deliverance. He’s the pathway of peace. He’s the roadway of righteousness. He’s the highway of holiness. He’s the gateway of glory. He’s the master of the mighty. He’s the captain of the conquerors. He’s the head of the heroes. He’s the leader of the legislatures. He’s the overseer of the overcomers. He’s the governor of governors. He’s the prince of princes. He’s the King of kings and He’s the Lord of lords. That’s my King. Yeah. Yeah. That’s my King. My King, yeah. His office is manifold. His promise is sure. His light is matchless. His goodness is limitless. His mercy is everlasting. His love never changes. His Word is enough. His grace is sufficient. His reign is righteous. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Well. I wish I could describe Him to you, but He’s indescribable. He’s indescribable. Yes. He’s incomprehensible. He’s invincible. He’s irresistible. I’m coming to tell you, the heavens of heavens cannot contain Him, let alone a man explaining Him. You can’t get Him out of your mind. You can’t get Him off of your hands. You can’t outlive Him and you can’t live without Him. Well, Pharisees couldn’t stand Him, but they found out they couldn’t stop Him. Pilot couldn’t find any fault in Him. The witnesses couldn’t get their testimonies to agree. Herod couldn’t kill Him. Death couldn’t handle Him and the grave couldn’t hold Him. That’s my King. Yeah. He always has been and He always will be. I’m talking about He had no predecessor and He’ll have no successor. There was nobody before Him and there’ll be nobody after Him. You cant impeach Him and He’s not going to resign. That’s my King! That’s my King! Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Well, all the power belongs to my King. We’re around here talking about black power and white power and green power, but it’s God’s power. Thine is the power. Yeah. And the glory. We try to get prestige and honour and glory for ourselves, but the glory is all His. Yes. Thine is the Kingdom and the power and glory, forever and ever and ever and ever. How long is that? And ever and ever and ever and ever. And when you get through with all of the evers, then, Amen. | S.M. Lockridge |
| Jesus | Saying of the Water turned to Wine. The conscious water saw its master and blushed. | Alexander Pope |
| Jesus | Jesus never wrote a book yet there are more books written about Jesus than any other subject in the world. Jesus never composed a song, but there is more music written about Jesus Christ than any other subject in history. Jesus never drew any pictures or did any sculpture, [but] more art has been made about Jesus Christ than any other subject in history. Time is divided into 2 sections time before his resurrection and time after. | |
| Jesus | We have a window into the heart of God through which we see the depth of love, deeper than the glassy sea burning brighter than tongues of fire; a song sweeter than that sung by the cherubim before the throne of God that if unleashed in all of its power would have surely melted the earth itself. | |
| Advocate | Paraclete: Person called in to help, summoned to give assistance or to plead another’s case. | |
| Expiation | The word expiation begins with the prefix ex, which means "out of" or "from." Expiation means to remove something. In biblical theology it has to do with taking away or removing guilt by means of paying a ransom or offering an atonement. It means to pay the penalty for something. Thus, the act of expiation removes the problem by paying for it in some way, in order to satisfy some demand. Christ's expiation of our sin means that He paid the penalty for it and removed it from consideration against us. | |
| Cross | I would catch a glimpse of a cross – not necessarily a crucifix; maybe two pieces of wood accidentally mailed together on a telegraph pole, for instance – and suddenly my heart would stand still. In an instinctive, intuitive way I understood something more important, more tumultuous, more passionate, was at issue than our good causes, however admirable they might be. | Muggy |
| Cross | Story about a guy who took his family to Israel for vacation. His mother-in-law went along to take care of the children. Unfortunately, while they were in Israel the mother-in-law died. They had trouble making funeral arrangements because they were in a foreign country. The Israeli coroner (TWO OPTIONS) body could be sent back home but it would be at the cost of $5,000, or she could be buried in Israel for only $200. The son-in-law quickly ALRIGHT I HAVE DECIDED – FLY HER HOME. “Yes sir,” the coroner said, “we can do that. But are you sure? It will be very expensive.” “I know,” said the son-in-law. “But 2000 years ago they buried someone over here and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance!” | |
| Cross | One of the world’s most loved comic strips is Hagar the Horrible. In one strip we find Hagar kneeling in prayer. “It’s not easy to believe in you God. We never see you. How come you never show yourself? How do we know you even exist…” Next we see · a flower springing into life beside Hagar,· a volcano erupting in the distance,· an eclipse of sun turning the sky black,· a star shooting across the stratosphere;· a tidal wave rushing over Hagar,· lightning flashing,· a bush beginning to burn,· a stone rolling away from the entrance to a tomb.Hagar pulls himself from the mud, dripping wet, surrounded by darkness. “OK, OK. I give up! Every time I bring up this subject, all we get is interruptions.” | |
| Cross | Wherever [Justin Martyr] looked he saw the cross. Neither the sea is crossed nor the earth is ploughed without it, he writes, referring to a ship’s mast and yard, and to a plough’s blade and yoke. Diggers and mechanics do not work without cross shaped tools, alluding to a spade and handle. Moreover, "the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the arms extended." And if the torso and arms of the human form proclaim the cross, so do the nose and eyebrows and the human face. | Jim Cronfel, of Justin Martyr |
| Cross | Ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil greatHere may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimateMark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful loadTis the word the lord’s anointed, Son of Man and Son of God | Thomas Kelly, "Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted" |
| Cross | In antiquity crucifixion was considered one of the most brutal and shameful modes of death. Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC. It was virtually never used in pre-Hellenic Greece. The Romans perfected crucifion for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4th century AD. Crucifixion in Roman times was applied mostly to slaves, disgraced soldiers, Christians and foreigners--only very rarely to Roman citizens. Death, usually after 6 hours--4 days, was due to multifactorial pathology: after-effects of compulsory scourging and maiming, haemorrhage and dehydration causing hypovolaemic shock and pain, but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Resultant anoxaemia exaggerated hypovolaemic shock. Death was probably commonly precipitated by cardiac arrest, caused by vasovagal reflexes, initiated inter alia by severe anoxaemia, severe pain, body blows and breaking of the large bones. The attending Roman guards could only leave the site after the victim had died, and were known to precipitate death by means of deliberate fracturing of the tibia and/or fibula, spear stab wounds into the heart, sharp blows to the front of the chest, or a smoking fire built at the foot of the cross to asphyxiate the victim. | |
| Cross | My Bible says, My King is the King of the JewsHe is the King of IsraelHe is the King of RightousnessHe's the King of the agesHe's the King of HeavenHe's the King of gloryHe's the King of Kings And He's The Lord of LordsThat's my King, I wonder do you Know HimMy King is a Sovereign KingNo means of measure can define His limitless loveHe's enduringly strongHe's entirely sincereHe's eternally steadfastHe's immortally gracefulHe's imperially powerfulHe's impartially mercifulDo you know Him?He's the greatest phenomenon that has ever crossed the horizon of this worldHe's God's SonHe's a sinner's saviorHe's the centerpiece of civilizationHe's unparalleledHe's unprecedentedHe's the loftiest idea in literatureHe's the highest personality in philosophyHe's the fundamental doctrine of true theologyHe's the only one qualified to be an all sufficient saviorI wonder if you know him todayHe supplies strength for the weakHe's available for the tempted and the triedAnd he sympathizes and he savesHe Strengthens and sustainsHe guards and he guidesHe heals the sickHe cleansed the lepersHe forgives sinnersHe discharges debtorsHe delivers the captiveHe defends the feebleHe blesses the youngHe serves the unfortunateHe regards the agedHe rewards the diligentAnd he beautifies the meagerI wonder if you know himHe's the key of knowledgeHe's the wellspring of wisdomHe's the doorway of deliveranceHe's the pathway of peaceHe's the roadway of righteousnessHe's the highway of holinessHe's the gateway of gloryDo you know Him?His life is matchlessHis goodness is limitlessHis mercy is everlastingHis love never changesHis word is enoughHis grace is sufficientHis reign is righteousHis yoke is easy And his burden is lightI wish I could describe him to youHe's indescribableHe's incomprehensibleHe's invincibleHe's irresistibleYou can't get him out of your mindYou can't get him off your handsYou can't out live himYou can't live without himThe Pharisees couldn't stand himBut they found out they couldn't stop himPilate couldn't find any fault in him Herod couldn't kill himDeath couldn't handle himAnd the grave couldn't hold himThat's my King, That's my King, That's my KingS.M. Lockridge | S.M. Lockridge |
| In the old days on Sinai Were tempests and dark cloud, And God was there in lightning, Thunder, and trumpet loud: - Upon a fairer mountain, Where pure snows lay congealed, Stood Jesus in His glory, The very Christ revealed. His rainment white and glistering, White as the glistering snow;His form a blaze of splendour, The like, no sun can show;His wondrous eyes resplendent In ecstasy of prayer; His radiant face transfigured To heaven's own beauty there.Deep shadows are the edging Of that sort of transient peace, For spirit-forms come warning Of the fore-doomed decease.Words from the cloud give witness, “This, my Beloved Son;” – When the dread voice is ended Jesus is found alone. All passed to lonely silence: - Not so, our hope is cast, Our blest transfiguration Eternally shall last;The manifested glory Of our great Lord to seeShall change us to His likeness! As He is, we shall be. O vision all surpassing, Filling the heavenly height! The Lamb once slain! transfigured In the throne-rainbow’s light.There for the endless ages All glorified is He,And His eternal glory Shall ours for ever be. | George Rawson, Hymns, Verses, and Chants | |
| Cross | The glory of Christ is much like going to the Hoover Dam. You have this amazing structure holding back vast quantities of water. There are times when they open the relief gates and millions of gallons of water comes pouring through. And for that moment you realize that though you are in awe of this pouring forth of water, there remains a vast and nearly eternal amount of water held back through that dam. And if it were let go not even the vast expanses of canyon could contain it. | |
| Incarnation | Everything that we create is different from us; even an artists self portrait. Only that which we beget is identical.. | Ravi Zacharias |
| Incarnation | Confronted with the incarnation, God is brought within the range of our understanding; God Himself becomes His own parable; which Faith, in wonder and humility can elucidate.” | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Incarnation | The man to whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge; he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men.But he just didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he’d much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so, he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound…Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud…At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in.So, he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them… He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms… Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.“If only I could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm… to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand.”At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow. | |
| Incarnation | A Sunday School teacher asked her class why Joseph and Mary took Jesus with them to Jerusalem. A small child replied, 'They couldn't get a baby-sitter.' | |
| Incarnation | In Washington, DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.About 4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.At 10 minutes:A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.At 45 minutes:The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.After 1 hour:He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $200 each to sit and listen to him play the same musicThis is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. | |
| Gospel | There is a story of a farmer whose sprawling farm was ravaged by a fire which swept through and consumed everything. As he mournfully walked among the charred ruins he saw the burnt carcass of one of his hens. He moved the carcass with his foot and underneath 4 young golden chicks sprang to live with lively chirps. The mother had gathered them under her wing lovingly protecting them, taking the intensity of the destructive fire upon herself while saving their lives. | |
| Gospel | The story is told of a man who, after parking his car, set out for a day hike in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Three miles into what was to be a relaxing afternoon outing, he noticed ominous storm clouds forming as the temperature dropped dangerously. Realizing a freak snowstorm was headed his way, the man began backtracking toward his car. He had a mile or so to go when the storm became so intense that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Losing his way, he walked for two hours until he realized he was freezing. Feeling a deadly lethargy, the man knew that if he sat down, he would never get up, so he fought it for as long as he could. But finally, the desire to rest was just too overpowering, so he sat down at the base of a tree, the snow still falling intensely. As he sat down, he felt something next to him. Brushing away the snow, he discovered the body of a man who had evidently stopped to rest only a few moments earlier. Finding a pulse, the young man stood to his feet and, with a burst of newfound energy, picked up the man who had almost frozen to death, put him on his shoulders, and began walking feverishly. After walking fifty yards or so, he bumped into the side of a cabin. Feeling his way to the front, he banged on the door, which was opened by a man who welcomed the pair inside to warm themselves by his roaring fire. The application is obvious. In attempting to save someone else, the young man was himself saved. In caring for someone else, he himself was cared for. And that's what Jesus meant when He said, "The measure you give out will be measured back to you" (Luke 6:38). | |
| Gospel | When tragedy strikes or when trials come, we'll either say, "This ought not to be. Poor me," or we'll say, "This can be used for Your glory, so pour me, Lord. Pour me out to the people in need all around."What did our great High Priest do in His time of tragedy, in His time of pain? Even as He hung on the cross in agony, He ministered to a man beside Him, to a woman below Him, and to the crowd around Him . . ."This day you shall be with Me in paradise," He said to the needy thief beside Him (see Luke 23:43)."Woman, behold thy son," He said to His grieving mother standing at the foot of the cross below Him (John 19:26)."Father, forgive them," He prayed concerning the jeering crowd surrounding Him (Luke 23:34).No wonder Caiaphas rent his garments that day (Matthew 26:65), for he was disqualified from priestly ministry at that moment, superseded by the great High Priest whose garment was not rent (John 19:24).The garment of Caiaphas was torn. Not so the garment of Jesus, for Jesus will never lose control emotionally or grieve hysterically. Therefore, neither must we. I'm not talking about "keeping a stiff upper lip," having a "positive mental attitude," or a "don't worry, be happy" mentality. I'm talking about the reality of our great High Priest living in you and me through both good days and bad.Stay in the place of ministry, gang. Follow the example of Jesus. When difficulties come your way, the best thing you can do is go for it more than you ever have previously, in giving out, in sharing with, and in caring for those beside and all around you. | |
| Gospel | For God (the greatest Giver) so loved (the greatest motive) the world (the greatest need), that He gave (the greatest act) His only begotten Son (the greatest gift), that whosoever (the greatest invitation) believeth (the greatest decision) in Him (the greatest Person) should not perish (the greatest deliverance), but (the greatest difference) have (the greatest certainty) everlasting life (the greatest possession). | |
| Gospel | John Griffeth lived in the western part of the United States during the depression years of dustbowls, dryness and drought. Married in 1929, the Griffeths watched their farming dreams blow into dust. Finally, they gathered their little son with their meager belongings and moved east. There John landed a job at the Mississippi River tending a drawbridge. One summer day in 1937, he took his son to spend the day with him. Wide-eyed and full of questions, Greg watched his father as he raised the bridge to let the ships pass, then lowered it for the great trains to roar across the river. About noon, John put up the bridge and sat with Greg on an observation platform to eat their lunches. They enjoyed the activity on the waterfront. John dreamed about traveling so he told Greg stories about the ships and where they were headed. He was so caught up in the stories that he lost track of time. Suddenly he was awakened by the shrill whistle of a locomotive. He glanced at his watch, noting that it was nearly time for the Memphis Express. John made his way to the gear-room, sat on the stool and took the lever in hand. He looked up the river and back down to see if any ships were coming. Then he glanced below ... Terror gripped him as his heart leaped into his throat and his blood froze in his veins! His little boy, Greg tried to follow his father, slipped off the catwalk and fell into the massive gears below. His leg was caught and if the bridge was lowered six tons of revolving metal would grind him to death! Mind spinning, John frantically sought for answers! He thought, "I'll run back, tie a rope, let myself down..." There wasn’t enough time. John moaned! He was trembling and perspiring as his eyes brimmed with tears. The shrill cry of the train whistle was alarmingly close. More than anything, he wanted to spare his son; but if he did many would die! There was no other way to spare their lives! Stricken and overwhelmed with grief, John bowed his head, covered his eyes, and released the lever. The gear room shook as the wheels turned and the great bridge settled down into place. In moments it was over and the Memphis Express came roaring past. John lifted his head and looked in the train. There a man read the morning news, the conductor was looking at his watch, and a woman in the dining car was feeding her little girl. No one noticed the grieving father or the newly torn body of his dear son. Choking with passion John called out, "What's the matter with you people? I just GAVE MY SON for you! Don't you even care?" Nobody heard; nobody looked; nobody knew and no one stopped. | |
| Gospel | In February 1941 Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest was put in the Auschwitz death camp for helping Jews escape Nazi terrorism. Months went by and in desperation an escape took place. The camp rule was enforced. Ten people would be rounded up randomly and herded into a cell where they would die of starvation and exposure as a lesson against future escape attempts. Names were called. A Polish Jew Frandishek Gasovnachek was called. He cried, "Wait, I have a wife and children!" Kolbe stepped forward and said, "I will take his place." Kolbe was marched into the cell with nine others where he managed to live until August 14. This story was chronicled on an NBC news special several years ago. Gasovnachek, by this time 82, was shown telling this story while tears streamed down his cheeks. A camera followed him around his little white house to a marble monument carefully tended with flowers. The inscription read: IN MEMORY OF MAXIMILIAN KOLBE HE DIED IN MY PLACE. Every day Gasovnachek lived since 1941, he lived with the knowledge, "I live because someone died for me." | |
| Propitiation | On the other hand, propitiation has to do with the object of the expiation. The prefix in this case is pro, which means "for." Propitiation has to do with what brings about a change in God's attitude toward us, so that we are restored to the fellowship and favor of God. In a sense, propitiation points to God's being appeased. If I am angry because you have offended me, but you then appease me, the problem will be removed. Thus propitiation brings in the personal element and stresses that God is no longer angry with us. Propitiation is the result of expiation. The expiation is the act that results in God's changing His attitude toward us. Expiation is what Christ did on the cross. The result of Christ's act of expiation is that God is propitiated. It is the difference between the ransom that is paid and the attitude of the One receiving the ransom. | |
| Propitiation | God has fulfilled His purpose in that he has set aside the guilt of sin accrued against Him | |
| Resurrection | Dr. Billy Graham told of an occasion when German Chancellor Korad Adenauer was in conversation with hi. Mr. Adenauer asked Dr. Graham, “Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead?” When Dr. Graham immediately answered that indeed he did, there was a long silence from the Chancellor, and then he said, “Out side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I know of no other hope for mankind. | |
| Trinity | You can’t have the Father without the Son and you can’t have the Son without the Father. When you get the Son you get the Father. | |
| Christ’s Suffering | Martin Luther King Jr. Jesus was obedient to unenforceable obligations | |
| Christ’s Suffering | “An actual and dreadful separation took place between the Father and Son; it was due to our sins and their just reward, and Jesus expressed this horror of great darkness, this God forsakenness, by quoting the only verse of which accurately described it, and by which he had perfectly fulfilled.” | John Stott |
| Christ’s Suffering | Quote: Calvin “If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual.. Unless his soul shared in the punishment, he would have been the Redeemer of bodies alone. In consequence he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man | |
| Christ’s Uniqueness | One Solitary life. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was 30. Then for 3 years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book, he never held an office, he never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He was on 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. He was turned over to his enemies and endured the mockery of a trial. He was nailed on a cross between two thieves; when he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave. 19 Centuuries have come and gone and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that ever marched all the navies that have ever sailed and the kings that have ever reigned have not affected the lives of man as much as that one solitary life. Critics have not been able to obliterate him, contrary views have not been able to smother him, and somehow within the deepest recesses of the human heart, for millions of people in this world the name of Jesus Christ still brings the concept of hope and the reality that there must be somebody out there who put my two feet on this earth and a reason to give me some hope | |
| Christ’s Uniqueness | James Stewart: He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men and yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that children loved to play with him and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine. No one was half as compassionate and kind to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such redness hot scorching words against sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love. Yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism he has all of us self styled realists soundly beaten. He was the servant of all washing the disciple’s feet yet masterfully he strode into the temple and the money changers and the hucksters fell over one another in their mad rush to get away from the fires they saw blazing in his eyes. He saved others yet at the last himself he did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels the mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality. | |
| Christ’s Uniqueness | WEH Lecky secular historian. "The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive in its practice. And has inserted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all of the dispositions of philosophers and all of the exhortations of moralists." | W.E.H. Lecky |
| Scientology | Tom Cruise is the new “Christ” of Scientology, according to leaders of the cult-like religion. The Mission: Impossible star has been told he has been “chosen” to spread the word of his faith throughout the world.And leader David Miscavige believes that in future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.A source close to the actor, who has risen to one of the church’s top levels, said: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.“Like Christ, he’s been criticized for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”Cruise joined the Church of Scientology in the ’80s. Leader L Ron Hubbard claimed humans bear traces of an ancient alien civilization. | |
| Divorce | 1300 new stepfamilies are forming every day. o Over 50% of US families are remarried or re-coupled.o The average marriage in America lasts only seven years.o One out of two marriages ends in divorce.o 75% remarryo 66% of those living together or remarried break up, when children are involved.o 80% of remarried, or re-coupled, partners with children both have careers.o 50% of the 60 million children under the age of 13 are currently living with one biological parent and that parent's current partner.o The 1990 US Census stated there will be more stepfamilies than original families by the year 2000o The 2000 US Census did not mention stepfamilies. According to the Stepfamily Foundation's estimates more than 50% of divorced fathers children visit their children. These children do not legally "reside" with their fathers. So, neither government nor academic research include these fathers and their children as stepfamilies. They are completely ignored and uncounted. Thus, boosting the numbers to well over 50% of US families.o 2 out 3 marriages taking place under 30 years of age end in divorce.(US Census)o 75% complain of "not having access to resources as a stepfamily," according to a recent Stepfamily Foundation survey of 2000 web questionnaires.o It is generally considered by researchers that couples today have a deficit of skills with which to make partnerships last. Explanations abound. o 80% of married women have careers and women are less dependent on the support of the male partner.o Over 80% of women who enter into stepfamilies are career women. These women do not have to endure the unexpected rigors of remarriage. o Men who choose to end a marriage also know that career women cost less to divorce. o A Boston University psychologist researcher reported that of the career women who had married men with children over 75% said that, "if they had do it again they would NOT marry a man with children." o" 50% of all women, not just mothers, are likely to live in a stepfamily relationship, when we include living-together families in our definition of the stepfamily." states Professor of Sociology Larry L. Bumpass of the University of Wisconsin.Only 45 percent of children "do well" after divorce.o 41% are "doing poorly, worried, underachieving, deprecating, and often angry."o Fifty percent of the women and 30 percent of the men were still intensely angry with their former spouses.o "Most felt the lack of a template, a working model, for a loving relationship between a man and a woman."o Divorced parents provide less time, less discipline, and are less sensitive to the children as they are caught up in their own divorce and its aftermath.o Many parents are unable to separate their needs from the children's needs and often share too much of their personal life with their children, placing the children in a precarious emotional state, vulnerable to grandiosity or to depression within what is left of their families.o The majority of parents of divorce are chronically disorganized and unable to parent effectively.o As diminished parenting continues, it permanently disrupts the child's once normal emotional growth and functioning. | |
| Maggie Gallagher, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, says in her book The Abolition of Marriage that we have falsely framed the divorce debate as "one between choice and coercion, individual liberty and state control…. The bad marriage haunts us in part because we have reduced the marriage commitment to a single, grim, frightening phrase: Couples should 'stay together for the sake of the children.' The vision it conjures – of loveless, bitter, tight-lipped martyrs living in hell with their equally miserable kids -- is impossible to uphold as a moral ideal….""'You can't force two people to stay married,' we tell ourselves and turn the page," she writes. "Divorce, however, is not usually the act of a couple, but of an individual. Eighty percent of divorces in this country are unilateral, rather than truly mutual, decisions. Rather, the divorce revolution can be more accurately described as a shift of power, favoring the interests of one party over others: the interests of the spouse who wishes to leave over those of the spouse who is being abandoned and over those of the children whose consent is not sought." | ||
| Feelings | The greatest adversary to your faith can be your feelings. | |
| Feelings | Real faith trusts in what God has said, not in what you feel. | |
| Feelings | Eagles catch thermal updrafts which enable to them to soar 15,000 feet in the atmosphere – they’re lifted up – they soar – that’s the life of faith. | |
| Feelings | After spending 14 billion dollars and running into disaster after disaster, Boston’s Big Dig experienced the climax of all tragedies, a loss of life. A woman and her husband, newlyweds from Jamaica Plains, were on their way to pick up family members from the airport. As they were driving underneath the I-90 tunnel hundreds of tons of ceiling came crashing down upon the car crushing the lady. Miraculously the husband escaped. Commuters, tourists and residents understandably began to question the safety of the Big Dig project. In defense of the project Mayor Thomas Menino declared that the tunnel was safe. When asked by a reporter why he believed the tunnel was safe Menino replied, “I just feel like it is.” | |
| Guilt | Judas Iscariot tried desperately to escape his guilt. He sought religious pardon, but there was none able to give. He sought to undo his wrong by restitution of the money, but that brought no freedom. Judas sought to alleviate and escape the weight of his guilt by killing himself only to realize his guilt carried through to the next life. Guilt hung like a millstone around Judas’ neck. He was drowning seeking to untie it and free himself only to realize that his plummet would be eternal and inescapable. | |
| Las Vegas | The 28th most populous city in the USA with a population of 583,756 Vegas is known for gambling, drinking, and taking drugs. Only established as a city in 1911, Sin City is a Mecca for 40 million tourists each year.The violent crime rate in Las Vegas is 120% higher than the national average.As of August 2012, Vegas has the highest unemployment rate in the USA.Marijuana is the most used drug in ‘The Atomic City’ closely followed by Methamphetamine, however all drugs including, crack, heroin, acid and prescription drugs are all widely available and widely popular.The most prevalent type of heroin in Nevada is known as Mexican black tar heroin. It is smuggled into Nevada by Mexican drug trafficking organizations.The U.S. government reported that retail-level drug traffickers in Vegas are attempting to increase the distribution of Mexican black tar and brown powder heroin by targeting high school students, particularly the more affluent high schools in the Las Vegas area.During the last 10 years in Nevada, per capita sales of Oxycodone went up by 366%. Hydrocodone sales rose 233%.According to DEA officials, pharmaceutical drug abusers are increasingly engaging. Pharmacy break-ins by pharmaceutical drug abusers have increased as some abusers who have become addicted to the drugs are becoming more desperate to acquire supplies.Methamphetamine is the number 1 drug in Southern Nevada and is highly used in Las Vegas. Smuggled over from Mexico, seizures at the border have increased by 270% over the last decade with record meth busts happening all over Vegas.The most used drug for people entering rehab in Las Vegas during the last decade was Meth with the rate at one point being at least 10% higher than the national average.The meth imported into the state is produced primarily in “super labs” (producing 10 pounds or more in a 24-hour period) by ethnic Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in Mexico and California.Methamphetamine trafficking and abuse are the leading contributors to property crime and violent crime in “The Entertainment Capital of The World."Males being admitted to rehab in Vegas have a higher instance of abuse of alcohol, marijuana and heroin whilst females have a higher instance of cocaine and prescription drug addiction. 13% more women are also addicted to Meth, but both sexes are considerably higher than the national average. “Pharm Parties” are also a major problem in Vegas. They involve teenagers gathering at a house before raiding their parents medicine cupboards, throwing a random assortment of pills into a bowel before taking their pick. They will also smoke synthetic cannabis, known as ‘spice’ or ‘K2’ as well as ‘bath salts’ which mimic Crystal Meth. Club Drugs, specifically MDMA, GHB, and LSD, are trafficked and abused in local nightclubs, adult entertainment clubs, and at raves. The trafficking of these drugs ranges from hand-to-hand sales within clubs or raves to larger sales between locals and out-of-town distributors. | |
| Hopelessness | The farcical and the absurd are hallmarks of a trapped society devoid of all hope. | Ravi Zacharias |
| Victimization | Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, weighed in with a letter to the campus community:This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience! An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad! It is supposed to make you feel guilty! The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins — not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization!So here’s my advice:If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!This is not a day care. This is a university! Las Vegas serves as a point of importation and a transshipment area for MDMA. Most MDMA that passes through or is destined for Las Vegas continues to come primarily from Southern California and New York."The City of Lights" is a key transshipment area for significant quantities of ice methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, Vegas acts as a stop off point before the drugs are moved around the whole of the US. | https://www.amazon.com/Not-Day-Care-Devastating-Consequences/dp/1621576051/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1500559307&sr=8-1&keywords=not+a+daycare&linkCode=sl1&tag=billint-20&linkId=4f05a9b324e86d6d6928c1c528985e1d |
| Church, Perseverance | During this long succession of centuries the church has outlived the destruction of Jerusalem, the dissolution of the Roman empire, fierce persecutions from without and heretical corruptions from within , the barbarian invasion, the confusion of the dark ages, the papal tyranny, the shock of infidelity, the ravages of revolution, the attacks of enemies and the errors of friends, the rise and fall of proud kingdoms, empires and republics, philosophical systems, and social organizations without number. And behold, it still lives, and lives in greater strength and wider extent than ever; controlling the progress of civilization, and the destinies of the world; marching over the ruins of human wisdom and folly, ever forward and onward; spreading silently its heavenly blessings from generation to generation, and from country to country, to the ends of the earth. It can never die; it will never see the decrepitude of old age; but like its divine founder, it will live in the unfading freshness of self-renewing youth and the unbroken vigor of manhood to the end of time, and will outlive time itself. Single denominations and sects, human forms of doctrine, government and worship, after having served their purpose may disappear and go the way of all flesh; but the Church Universal of Christ, in her divine life and substance, is too strong for the gates of hell. She will only exchange her earthly garments for the festal dress of the Lamb’s Bride and rise from the state of humiliation to the state of exaltation and glory. Then at the coming of Christ she will reap the final harvest of history, and as the church triumphant in heaven -------celebrate and enjoy the eternal Sabbath of holiness and peace. This will be the endless end of history, as it was foreshadowed already at the beginning of its course in the holy rest of God after the completion of His work of creation. | Phillip Schaff |
| Church, Perseverance | Quote: In compiling his great work Foxes Book of Martyrs, John Fox says these words with respect to this section of Scripture. In these words three things are to be noted. First, that Christ will have His church in this world. Secondly that the same church should be mightily opposed, not only by the world but also by the uttermost strength and powers of all hell. And thirdly, that the same church, notwithstanding the uttermost of the devil and all his malice, should continue. | |
| Church, Sects | We are willing to start denominations over the issue of Matthias or Paul being God’s replacement for Judas. | |
| Hell | In our culture people become very offended about being confronted. When we come to the topic of hell and the intensity of pressure that needs to be laid upon the listener people may object. Even Christians would call for a more gentle and patient admonition. But what if the navigator on the Titantic when learning of the giant iceberg they were about to crash into leisurely divulged the information after a cup of tea and catching his favorite television show. Or perhaps if he chose to completely ignore it hoping that by the sheer lack of attention paid to it, it might go away. You may say, “That illustration doesn’t apply because they hit the iceberg and the ship sunk.” And I say, ‘Exactly my point, because people were unwilling to pay attention. | |
| Hell | No, my Hearers, we cannot talk to you as all the people of God, for you are not! Some of you are the children of the Wicked One and though it may not be pleasant to be told so, yet it is no business of ours to please you! Our duty is to preach so as to please God and benefit the souls of men. | C.H. Spurgeon |
| Family | Parents demand for the spiritual sake of their child that they be sent to Christian school and spared the evil, hatred, sexual pressure and worldliness of secular education. Then when their children come home the family gathers around the television where they begin to entertain themselves with evil, hatred, explicit sexuality and worldliness. | |
| Power | Napoleon: Alexander’s kingdom and my kingdom will ultimately come to naught but Jesus’ kingdom is indestructible because ours was dominated by power and force His dominated the lives of people with the power of love. | Napoleon |
| Power | Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely | Lord Acton |
| Power | “In seeking to become great we have become nothing at all.” | |
| Influence | Adoniram Judson was the first American foreign missionary. He had a heart for Burma and was used extraordinarily by God. Brilliantly gifted in language, Adoniram translated the Bible into Burmese. It is the same translation they use today some 200 years later. When was the fire kindled? The fire was kindled when his father, a Congregational Pastor, said, to him, “Your mother and I knew that you were smart when you learned to read at 3 years old. Train your mind son, and you will be a great man someday.” | |
| Influence | Susanna Wesley told her young son, John, "If you would judge of the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of pleasure, then take this simple rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, and takes off the relish of spiritual things--that to you is sin." | Susanna Wesley |
| Atheism | A young student was listening to the lectures of Professor Nathan at the university of New York and the discussion was on the existence of God. The young student with arrogant intellectual airs stood up in the question and answer period seeking to dumbfound the professor before the audience and said, “Sir. I have a question for you. How do I know that I exist?” Professor Nathan answered, “Whom shall I say is asking the question?” | |
| Atheism | The legacy of atheism is illustrated in the murder of 2 Dartmouth professors at the hands of 2 young men, Robert and Jim, who steeped themselves in atheistic philosophy. Nietzsche was a particular favorite and his teaching on the nihilism (the existential notion that God is dead and that no moral values exist – fueled their flames. | |
| Atheism | Atheism is unable to cross the major hurdles in its path (origin, meaning, morality and destiny) and ends up making either illicitly or ill-fated leaps. In some of these efforts, the resulting damage is far greater than others. But cumulatively, the hurdles are ultimately uncrossable, and this failure has immense implications. | |
| Atheism | In his famous debate in 1948 with the philosopher Frederick Copleston, Bertrand Russell revealed his philosophical Achille’s heal on morality. At the midpoint of the debate, Copleston asked Russell on what basis he differentiated between right and wrong, and Russell answered that he did so n the same basis that he differentiated between yellow and blue, Copleston challenged the analogy because colors, he said, were differentiated on the basis of seeing. How does one differentiate between good and bad? And Russel replied that he did so on the basis of feeling. | |
| Christianity | If the Bible were to be subtracted from what we continue to call Western Civilization, or Christendom, it would leave a great hole in our morales, in our art and literature, music and architecture; in our culture altogether, besides depriving us of the faith whereby, with much backsliding, much erring and straying like lost sheep, we have lived through the Christian Centuries. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Christianity | Islam (The Crescent – a phase of the moon representing sovereignty), Buddhism (The Lotus Flower – wheel shape represents the cycle of birth and death), Judaism (The Star of David – God’s Messianic Covenant with David), Christianity (The Cross) | |
| Christianity | Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it has a God who knows the way out of the grave. | G.K. Chesterton |
| Christianity | I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. | C.S. Lewis |
| Philosophy | The Hebrew pursued light, the Greek pursued knowledge, the Roman pursued glory. 2 Corinthians 4:6 | |
| Philosophy | Don’t judge a philosophy by its abuses. | Saint Augustine |
| Philosophy | There are three levels to Philosophy. There is the principle, there is the presentation and there is the practical. Communicating philosophy on all three levels is absolutely vital. | |
| Evolution | The theoretical biologist John Maynard Smith has admitted that "there is nothing in neo-Darwinism which enables us to predict a long-term increase in complexity.” | John Maynard Smith |
| Evolution | It was not fantasy that prompted Karl Marx to consider dedicating his Das Kaptial to Charles Darwin. He requested Darwin to accept the dedication in the English translation. Darwin declined the offer. His rational behind the dedicatory consideration was that he saw how the Darwinian hypothesis provided the scientific substructure to support his economic infrastructure, on which he could build his man made utopian superstructure. | |
| Evolution | Hitler using logical extrapolation of evolutionary principles. From Mein Kampf, “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality… We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence, imperious, relentless and cruel. If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race (like the Germanic race) should inter mingle with an inferior (like the Jewish race) Wy/ Because, in such a case her efforts, throughout hundred and thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being may thus be rendered futile. | Hitler |
| Materialism | The lunar landscape of a reductionist science, dismissive of all but the material, is not the home of humanity. | Keith Ward |
| Nietzche | I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty. (AntiChrist) | Nietzche |
| Nietzche | He prognosticated that the 20th century would become the bloodiest century in history and second, that a universal madness would break out. He has been riht on both counts. More people have been killed because of ideological differences, and destroyed in the battlefields of geopolitical maneuvering, in the 20th century than in any other century in history, and by some calculations, more than in the previous nineteen century. Nietzsche took the first step and went insane himself; a result of course to the destruction of God in the minds of men, to which he considered himself a benefactor. | Nietzche |
| Freud | “Spirituality is a result of psychological forces such as projecting memories of a father figure onto a cosmic screen.” | Freud |
| Theology | The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and his compulsion is our liberation. | C.S. Lewis Surprised by Joy |
| Theology | God is like the sun , you can’t look at it but without it you can’t look at anything else. | G.K. Chesterton |
| Election | Try to explain divine election and you may lose your mind, try to explain it away and you may lose your soul. | |
| Sometimes things come suddenly and unexpectedly crashing down on us that cause a real stench. The Cinnamons of Woodenville Washington. As reported by a Seattle newspaper: Leroy and Jerry Cinnamon were at home watching the Seattle Seahawks on television. When a basketball size chunk of frozen sewage crashed through their roof blasting through the ceiling and splattering on the living room floor only a few feet where they were watching tv. Officials from the FAA say, “It appears the Cinnamon’s house was the target Sunday of an inadvertent discharge from an airliner restroom. The waste bomb made a 3 foot by 2-foot hole in the roof and the ceiling of their 2-story house in this northeast Seattle suburb. “It made one great big, large kerbang and we thought something had exploded,” Leroy said. He and his wife said firefighters who responded to their emergency call figured it had to be one of two things: either a meteorite or frozen aircraft waste. When the object began to melt all doubts were removed. | ||
| Missed Opportunities | 1999 Excite.com missed opportunity to buy Google from founders for 750K(370b). Ron Wayne, Apple's third co-founder, sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800 two weeks after launch. He later got $1,500 for renouncing all claims to ownership. If he had kept it, worth about $56 billion. Mark Zuckerburg's roommate joe Green opp for 5% of Facebook (dad advised against it) $10Billion. LOST | |
| Money | Eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed Pew Research Center poll getting rich is their generation's most important or 2nd-important life goal; 51% said the same about being famous | |
| Victory | God has given you everything you need to have victory over the devil. You’re not made for defeat - you’re made for victory. | |
| Communication | Sometimes things church be confusing – announcements in different bulletins laugh: Don't let worry kill you—let the church help. - Thursday night—Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow - This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends. - Next Sunday a special collection will be taken to defray the cost of the new carpet. All those wishing to do something on the new carpet will come forward and do so. - This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the alter. | |
| Communication | Pastor knew a surfer who lived in Mexico who had given his life to the Lord and one day the Lord said to the surfer, "Hey, ask me for one thing. Whatever you want, nothing is to great." The surfer said God, "I want to surf in Hawaii. Would you build a bridge from here in Mazatlan to Hawaii so I can get there quickly and more cheaply. God said, “well that’s a big project. Requires a lot of steel, concrete, the pilings will have to go reall deep down. Ask for one other thing.” He said, “God you know I’ve been having communication problems with my wife. Can you make her understand me?” God said, “How many lanes do you want on the bridge?" | |
| Communication | This week I read about a conference held at the United Nations a few years ago. To welcome delegates from many nations, they stretched a banner across the front of the UN. It said “Welcome” in many different languages. However, there was a tiny mistake. In one of the languages, they got one letter wrong so instead of saying, “Welcome” in that language, it said “Circumcision.” If I had traveled a long distance and saw that on a sign, I think I’d find another conference to attend. | |
| Loving God | “I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and to give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap, in mercy, He shall give me a host of children that I may lead through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose fingers' ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, smell His garments, and smile into my Lover's eyes, ah, then, not stars, nor children, shall matter--only Himself.” | Jim Elliot |
| Righteousness | “Christ, having taught us to indulge the weakness of our brethren, here cautions us not to indulge their wickedness.” | Matthew Henry |
| Righteousness | Righteousness: New state of being established through faith in Christ, settling a person’s standing before God and the new nature leading to right living. | |
| Righteousness | Righteousness is not just something you do it is something that’s being done in you. | |
| Righteousness | Apple seed produces apples, peach seed peaches, grape seed grapes God’s seed produces righteousness. | |
| Leadership | You must set and respond to fundamental goals that move your followers. | Abraham Lincoln |
| Leadership | When you make it to the top turn down and reach for the person behind you. | Abraham Lincoln |
| Leadership | You must be both fair and decent in the both the business and personal side of life. | Abraham Lincoln |
| Leadership | Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. | Abraham Lincoln |
| Leadership | If your actions inspire others to dream more to learn more to do more and to become more then you are a leader. | John Quincy Adams |
| Leadership | Leadership: it’s the ability to communicate a compelling state of affairs and influence people into a direction. | |
| Leadership | We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. 1 RALLIED | Winston Churchill |
| Witness | Never add the weight of your character to a charge against a person without knowing it to be true. | Abraham Lincoln |
| God’s Ways | In His calling, “Moses was raised in a palace to be used in a desert, Joseph was raised in a desert to be used in a palace.” | Ravi Zacharias |
| Preaching | Preaching is to give life; yet it may kill. The preacher holds the keys; he locks as well as unlocks. Preaching is God’s great institution for the planting and maturing of spiritual life. When properly executed its benefits are untold; when wrongly executed, no evil can exceed its damaging results. | E.M. Bounds |
| Preaching | The year 1983 marked the 500th birthday of the great reformer, Martin Luther. Found by his deathbed, scrawled in German and Latin, was this declaration: “We are beggars: That is true.” This statement may have inspired D. T. Niles to say, “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he can find a piece of bread.” The church is a fellowship of beggars, They are always in the bread line, if not receiving, then giving. | |
| Preaching | A boy was watching his father, a pastor, write a sermon. "How do you know what to say?" he asked. "What, God tells me." "Oh, then why do you keep crossing things out?" | |
| Preaching | Three boys are in the school yard bragging about their fathers.The first boy says, “My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem,they give him $50.”The second boy says, “That's nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on piece of paper,he calls it a song, they give him $100.”The third boy says, “I got you both beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper,he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to collect all the money!” | |
| Preaching | Some years ago, a fearful railroad wreck took a dreadful toll of life and limb in an eastern state. A train, loaded with young people returning from school, was stalled on a suburban track because of what is known as a "hot-box." The limited was soon due, but a flagman was sent back to warn the engineer in order to avert a rear-end collision. Thinking all was well, the crowd laughed and chatted while the train-hands worked on in fancied security. Suddenly the whistle of the limited was heard and on came the heavy train and crashed into the local, with horrible effect.The engineer of the limited saved his own life by jumping, and some days afterwards was hauled into court to account for his part in the calamity. And now a curious discrepancy in testimony occurred. He was asked, "Did you not see the flagman warning you to stop?"He replied, "I saw him, but he waved a yellow flag. I took it for granted all was well, and so went on, though slowing down."The flagman was called, "What flag did you wave?""A red flag, but he went by me like a shot.""Are you sure it was red?""Absolutely."Both insisted on the correctness of their testimony, and it was demonstrated that neither was color-blind. Finally, the man was asked to produce the flag itself as evidence. After some delay he was able to do so, and then the mystery was explained. It had been red, but it had been exposed to the weather so long that all the red was bleached out, and it was but a dirty yellow!Oh, the lives eternally wrecked by the yellow gospels of the day -- the bloodless theories of unregenerate men that send their hearers to their doom instead of stopping them on their downward road! | |
| Preaching | A little girl became restless as the preacher's sermon dragged on and on. Finally, she leaned over to her mother and whispered, "Mommy, if we give him the money now, will he let us go?" | |
| Salvation | A sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Salvation | Salvation is a free gift; when we take it we give everything to God in worship. | |
| Salvation | The more lurid the old Adam, the more impressive the new, so that, in testifying converts have a way of dwelling upon their past sins and misdemeanors in such detail and so ardently that an element of exhibitionism and even spiritual pornography, if there is such a thing, is liable to creep in. | Malcolm Muggeridge |
| Salvation | Pascal kept this note on his person and it was found sewn in his coat at his death. “ Certainty, certainty, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. Oblivion of the world and of everything except God.” | Blaise Pascal |
| Salvation | Jesus said come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Heavy laden like a pack mule about to break because of the weight of it’s load and the length of the road. Jesus calls us to Himself that He might remove the burden of sin, fear, doubt, anxiety, fretful past etc. Muggy | Muggy |
| Time | Now let me give you a bit of Einsteinian physics. Einstein said that time is relative to motion. I don’t know whether you know relativity theory. However, according to Einstein, the faster you travel the more time is compressed. If I put you in a rocket and sent you into outer space traveling at 170,000 miles a second and said: “Come back in 10 years,” when you returned you would be 10 years older and all the rest of us would be 20 years older. If I sent you into outer space traveling at 180,000 miles a second, when you returned our 20 years would be compressed into one day of your time. If we got you traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second...now we can’t do that because as you approach the speed of light your weight and your size would expand in a geometric progression (I tell you that because don’t let anybody ever say “you’re fat”, just say “I’m traveling too fast!”), but if I could get you traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, all of time – from the Alpha and the Omega, from the beginning and the end – would be compressed into one eternal now. Everything would happen now.You say: “Why did you tell us that?” Because I believe Jesus is God, and when He was hanged on Calvary’s Cross, He died for the sins of all people, past, present and future. He was and He is simultaneous with you right here. You say: “But there are 2,000 years separating me here and Jesus on the cross back there.” However, at the speed of light these two moments are one, compressed into the same moment.That’s why Jesus could say: “Before Abraham was, I am.” He was not in the past tense or a future tense; the name of God is “I am what I am.” God never was, God never will be. For God, time is no more, all time is compressed into one eternal now, which means that right now, if you will let Him, Jesus will reach out from Calvary and touch you. | Tony Campolo |
| Jesus, Names | Jesus Christ Faithful Witness First Begotten of the Dead Prince of the Kings of the Earth Alpha and Omega First and Last Son of Man He that lives and was dead He that holds the seven stars He who walks midst the golden candlesticks He who hath the sharp sword with two edges Son of God He which searches the reins and hearts He that hath the seven Spirits of God He that hath the seven stars He that is holy and true He that hath the key of David He that opens and no man shuts He that shuts and no man opens The Amen The faithful and true witness The beginning of the creation of God Lord Lion of the tribe of Judah The root of David A lamb as it had been slain The Lamb Lord of Lords King of Kings Faithful and true Rider of the white horse The Word of God Christ The Lord God of the Holy Prophets Beginning and the end The bright and morning star | |
| 2nd Coming of Christ | Look up, pray up, pack up because we’re going up. | |
| Bible | If you rake you get leaves if you dig you get diamonds. | John Piper |
| Bible | Referring to the injuries that continue to make it difficult for him to express himself, Alex writes, “Please forgive the brevity, but because of my limitations I have to keep this short. … I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible." | |
| Bible | Castaway: everything needed to save his life was in the package that he was protecting – cell phone. If he just would have opened it. Everything we need is in the Bible – if we would just open it and use the contents | |
| Bible | Voltaire “Boasted in his atheism. In 20 years Christianity will be no more. My single handle shall destroy the edifice it took 12 apostles to rear.- 20 years the Geneva Bible society was producing Bibles in his house- To this day they still continue to produce Bibles in that home. | |
| Bible | 2017 Barna Study: found only 17 percent of Christians “believe that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.” | |
| 10 Commandments | Centuries ago, God came down, went to the Germans and said, "I have Commandments that will help you live better lives." The Germans asked, "What are Commandments?" God said, "Rules for living." "Can you give us an example?" God said, "Thou shalt not kill." "Not kill? We're not interested." So God went to the Italians and said, "I have Commandments..." The Italians wanted an example and the Lord said, "Thou shalt not steal." "Not steal? We're not interested." Next the Lord went to the French saying, "I have Commandments..." The French wanted an example and the Lord said, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." The French weren’t interested. God then went to the Jews and said, "I have Commandments..." "Commandments," said the Jews, "How much are they?" "They're free." Jews said "We'll take 10." | |
| 10 Commandments | A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds.After explaining the commandment to 'Honour thy father and thy mother,' she asked,'Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?'Without missing a beat, one little boy answered, 'Thou shall not kill.' | |
| Giving | There was a wealthy Christian who daily, at family devotions, prayed for the needs of the missionaries that his church supported. One morning, after he had concluded family prayers, his little boy said, “Dad, if I had your checkbook, I could answer your prayers!” | |
| Ministry | As a bagpiper I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a graveside funeral director to play at the graveside service of a homeless man. He had no family or friends so this service was to be at a proper cemetery in the Kentucky backcountry. As I was not familiar with the backwoods I got lost. I finally arrived an hour late and had noticed that the funeral director was gone and there was no hearse in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt bad and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and noticed that the vault lid was already in place. I didn’t know what else to do so I started to play. The workers put down their lunch and started to gather round. I played out my heart and soul for this homeless man with no family or friends . I played like I never played before. And as I played Amazing Grace the workers began to weep. They wept I wept we all wept together. When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and headed back to my car though my head hung low my heart was full. As I opened the door to my car I heard one of the workers say, "Never seen nothin' like that before and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for 20 years." | |
| Ministry | Questions I asked Norman Geisler1. What’s the most rewarding?a. “Seeing my children continuing in the faith”2. What’s been the most consistently difficult?a. Dealing with Boards3. If you were in front of 2000 young pastors what would you say to them?a. Spurgeon Quote: We need to stop entertaining the goats and start feeding the sheep. | Norman Geisler |
| Ministry | Ministry takes place when divine resources meet human needs through loving channels to the glory of God. | Warren Wiersbe |
| Ministry | Methods are many, principles are few; methods always change, principles never do. | Warren Wiersbe (On Being a Servant) |
| Ministry | The trouble with too many of us is that we think God called us to be manufacturers when He really called us to be distributors. | Warren Wiersbe (On Being a Servant) |
| Ministry | Prayer, meditation, and temptation make a minister. | Martin Luther |
| Ministry | 1) Leader- Flying in a V formation is a good way to reduce fatigue in the members of the flock and a large or strong bird will take the lead.2) Followers- Each bird will benefit from the updraft created by the flapping of the bird in front’s wings (which 3) Replacement- When the flock changes direction, a new leader will take the helm.4) Sick birds- A sick or wounded bird will drop out of formation and one other bird will follow it until it recovers or dies.5) Fatigue- If the leader becomes tired it will rotate back into formation and another bird will then take the lead.6) Resistance- If a bird falls out of formation it will notice the extra resistance and immediately get back in line. | |
| Sin | Frank Shaw experienced sea captain 1870’s. Men mutaneered against him. As they were going around cape horn they disagreed with the commands. They shot him in the head and threw his body overboard on an ice shelf of the Antarctic Ice sheet. When they came back tohome port in London they said their captain died of sickness. In 1910 off the coast of central chili in one of the ports an iceberg was seen floating. The men sailed out in ships to dynamite it. Couple guys jumped out and saw a frozen body. Chipped the body out of the ice and they saw the clothing of a captain with ID. They rounded up these men 40 years after their crime and hung them from the gallows. You never know what iceberg is going to float by. | |
| Random Jokes | Jewish guys having breakfast slams down coffee punches Chinese guy – that’s for pearl harbor – Chinese guy says, “why did you punch me I’m chinese that was the Japanese (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese its all the same to me) Chinese guy slams down his coffee punches the Jewish guy that’s for Titantic – Jewish guy – why did you punch me that was an iceberg (iceberg, Goldberg, Stineberg its all the same to me) | |
| Death | Ivan Macguire wanted to be the best skydiving photographer ever. Excited about his last photo shoot he jumped out of the plane to photograph the other skydivers without his parachute. He hit the ground at 150mph | |
| Love | Pastor one day encouraged his congregation to love each other. He said, “I want you right now to think of the person you struggle the most with. The person that gets on your nerves, drives you nuts, rubs you the wrong way. The person that you avoid and sometimes wish would go away. I want you to go home tonight and bake that person a chocolate cake.” The next morning the pastor and his wife were heading to church – his wife walked out the front door and let out a scream came back in and said, ‘There’s 20 chocolate cakes on our front porch.” | |
| Love | A person who has been conquered and consumed by God’s love is able to love others the way they’ve been loved by God. | |
| Pretending | There was a man who had been out of work for a long time and decided to inquire at the local zoo. He told the zookeeper, “I would like a job. I will clean cages. I will do whatever you need.”The zookeeper said, “I’m sorry. We would love to hire you, but there just aren’t any openings right now.” Noticing how big and burly the man was, the zookeeper suddenly had an idea.He said, “This is crazy, and you don’t have to agree to it, but would you be willing to put on a costume and pretend to be a gorilla? Our gorilla died last week. He was our most popular exhibit. If you will be the gorilla, we will have a suit custom-made for you. We’ll pay you really well.”Desperate for work, the man took the job. Feeling a little apprehensive on his first day, he put on the gorilla suit and climbed into the cage. He made a few gorilla moves and beat his chest a little. The people loved it.The next day, he tried shaking the bars, screaming, and running around. The crowds started growing. By the third day, he was really enjoying his job and began swinging on the vines. But he swung too far, went over the wall, and landed in the middle of the lion’s cage.The lion turned and walked toward him rather quickly. The man knew that if he called for help, people would discover he wasn’t really a gorilla. But if he kept quiet, he would be the lion’s lunch. So, he screamed, “Help!”“Shut up, stupid!” the lion whispered back. “You’ll get us both fired!” | |
| Marriage | The story is told of an old gentleman in a church who was faithfully and lovingly married to his wife for many years. One day he and his wife were spending time with a younger couple. The husband of the younger couple noticed how the older man referred to his wife and honey, lovey, sweetie pie, sugar plum. The younger man asked, “How is it that after all of these years you have such a tender love for your wife calling her all of those beautiful names?” The old man said, “Well you see I can’t quite remember her name.” | |
| Marriage | Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother,'Why is the bride dressed in white?''The mother replied, 'Because white is the color of happiness,and today is the happiest day of her life.'The child thought about this for a moment then said,'So why is the groom wearing black?' | |
| Marriage | A police recruit was asked during the exam, 'What would you do if you had to arrest your own mother in law?' He answered, 'Call for backup.' | |
| Marriage | At Sunday School they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Johnny seemed especially intent when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs. Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and she said, 'Johnny, what is the matter?' Little Johnny responded,'I have pain in my side. I think I'm going to have a wife.' | |
| Marriage | 2 people were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. They were both 60 years old. Fairy godmother was there congratulating them on their good job and their faithfulness. She said, “You guys have done such a good job I am going to give each of you a wish. She turned to the woman and asked, “What is your wish?” She said, “ I would like to take a world cruise with my husband.” Poof 2 tickets appeared in her hands. Fairy godmother turned to the husband and she said, “What would you like?” He took her to the side and said, “I would like a wife 30 years younger than me.” Poof. He turned 90 years old. | |
| Satan | Two boys were walking home from Sunday school after hearing a strong preaching on the devil. One said to the other, “What do you think about all this Satan stuff?”The other boy replied, “Well, you know how Santa Claus turned out. It's probably just your dad.” | |
| Satan | Barna: Only17% Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic | |
| Satan | One of the greatest deceptions the devil has created in the western world is the idea that he doesn’t exist. | |
| God’s Will | A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Bible class.As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don't let me be late! Dear Lord, please don't let me be late!” While she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again! As she ran she once again began to pray,“Dear Lord, please don't let me be late... But please don't shove me either!” | |
| Singleness | An elderly woman died last month. Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers. In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, “They wouldn't take me out while I was alive; I don't want them to take me out when I'm dead.” | |
| Healings | With Basma and Imed we traveled to a remote village and were greeted like movie stars. The man, his wife and 2 kids began to relate an incredible testimony. He had been watching satellite tv and the program Aslema came on. He listened as these Muslim background believers began to share what Jesus had done in their lives. He was so moved by the Holy Spirit that He gave his life to Jesus right there. Hungry for more he was desiring to read the Bible. There were no Bibles allowed in Tunisia and knowing that the nearest Bible was in Egypt he made his trek by foot and by bus. On return he began to tell his wife all that Jesus was doing in his life. His wife ridiculed him as well as his neighbors. The man continued to live faithfully sharing his experience. His wife had chronic migraines and in overwhelming pain she asked her husband to pray for her. Not ever doing this before, and not knowing what to say he took his Bible, laid it on her head and asked God to heal her. God healed her and she gave her life to Jesus. The combination of personal testimony and the Word of God. | |
| Power of the Gospel | As he was speaking, [Dr. Harry A.] Ironside noticed that on the edge of the crowd a well-dressed man had taken a card from his pocket and had written something on it. As Ironside finished his talk this man came forward, lifted his hat and very politely handed him the card. On one side was his name, which Ironside immediately recognized. The man was one of the early Socialists who had made a name for himself, lecturing not only for Socialism but also against Christianity. As Ironside turned the card over, he read, “Sir, I challenge you to debate with me the question ‘Agnosticism versus Christianity’ in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock. I will pay all expenses.”Ironside reread the card aloud and then replied somewhat like this. “I am very much interested in this challenge….Therefore I will be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions: namely, that in order to prove Mr______ has something worth fighting for and worth debating about, he will promise to bring with him to the hall next Sunday two people, whose qualifications I will give in a moment, as proof that Agnosticism is of real value in changing human lives and building true character.“First he must promise to bring with him one man who was for years what we commonly call a ‘down-and-outer.’ I am not particular as to the exact nature of the sins that had wrecked his life and made him an outcast from society - whether a drunkard, or a criminal of some kind, or a victim of his sensual appetite – but a man who for years was under the power of evil habits from which he could not deliver himself, but who on some occasion entered one of Mr._____’s meetings and heard his glorification of Agnosticism and his denunciations of the Bible and Christianity, and whose heart and mind as he listened to such an address were so deeply stirred that he went away from that meeting saying, ‘Henceforth, I too am an Agnostic!’ and as a result of imbibing that particular philosophy found that a new power had come into his life. The sins he once loved he now hates, and righteousness and goodness are now the ideals of his life. He is now an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society – all because he is an agnostic.“Secondly, I would like Mr.______ to promise to bring with him one woman – and I think he may have more difficulty in finding the woman than the man – who was once a poor wretched, characterless outcast, the slave of evil passions, and the victim of man’s corrupt living……perhaps one who had for years lived in some evil resort…..utterly lost, ruined and wretched because of her life of sin. But this woman also entered a hall where Mr.______ was loudly proclaiming his Agnosticism and ridiculing the message of the Holy Scriptures. As she listened, hope was born in her heart, and she said, ‘This is just what I need to deliver me from the slavery of sin!’ She followed the teaching and became an intelligent Agnostic or infidel. As a result, her whole being revolted against the degradation of the life she had been living. She fled from the den of iniquity where she had been held captive so long; and today, rehabilitated, she has won her way back to an honored position in society and is living a clean, virtuous, happy life – all because she is an Agnostic.“Now” he said, addressing the gentleman who had presented him with the card and the challenge, “if you will promise to bring these two people with you as examples of what Agnosticism can do, I will promise to meet you at the Hall of Science at four o’clock next Sunday, and I will bring with me at the very least 100 men and women who for years lived in such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict, but who have been gloriously saved through believing the gospel which you ridicule. I will have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.”Dr. Ironside then turned to the Salvation Army Captain, a woman, and said, “Have you any who could go with me to such a meeting?” She exclaimed with enthusiasm, “We can give you forty at least from just this one corps, and we will give you a brass band to lead the procession!”“Fine,” Dr. Ironside answered. “Now, Mr.______, I will have no difficulty picking up sixty others from the various missions, gospel halls and evangelical churches of the city; and if you will promise faithfully to bring two such exhibits as I have described, I will come marching in at the head of such a procession, with the band playing, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, and I will be ready for the debate.”Apparently, the man who had made the challenge must have had some sense of humor, for he smiled wryly and waved his hand in a deprecating sort of way as if to say, “Nothing doing” and then edged out of the crowd while the bystanders clapped for Ironside and the others.The power of the living Christ operating by means of the Holy Spirit through the written Word changes lives. This has been true throughout history. It is a powerful proof that the Bible is indeed the word of God. | James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Comprehensive & Readable Theology |
| Power of the Gospel | The moral law can’t change us, circumstances can’t complete us, mystical experiences won’t satisfy us; only Jesus is able to save us. John McLaughlin of the Milwaukee Bucks. Stewart Briscol was introduced to him in an airport. John’s friend asked Steward to share Jesus, but John said, “I am a man who has everything and walked away.” He got saved and this is the story. He was traveling and came to his hotel room. He entered and turned on the tv, it happened to be a religious program. Just then the bell boy knocked to deliver a bag and as he entered he said, “Mr. McLaughlin I didn’t know you were a Christian (upon seeing the tv). Before he could answer the bell boy said, “I am so priviledged to be in this room with you do mind if we pray together. John said, “No” and then said, “Alright.” And there he knelt by the bed with this bell boy and prayed to receive Jesus in to his life. | |
| 4th of July | For July 4th ServiceWhen in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. | |
| Temptation | Temptation is a tug at the human mind or heart for the destruction of the soul. | |
| Disappointment | The feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations. | |
| Divine Appointment | A circumstance arranged by God for you to WALK BY FAITH IN for God’s glory, your joy and for someone’s blessing. |
