Daily Archives: November 4, 2013

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – God Reveals His Presence

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Charles Stanley

Psalm 42:1-5

How does the Lord make His presence known in the lives of His children? Although this question does not have a simple “one size fits all” answer, there are several general ways in which God chooses to reveal Himself.

For example, He may wake you from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. Many times I have sat straight up in bed, knowing for certain that Jesus was right there with me, giving me answers to some serious questions from the day. Did I see Him or hear a voice? No. But did I know He was there? Absolutely.

God also makes His presence known by giving instantaneous guidance. Each step of the way, decision after decision, He leads us where He wants us to go.

And quite often the Lord will show Himself by giving such a clear word that you know beyond any doubt that it was from Him. How many times have you been reading a Scripture passage when suddenly a light seemed to flip on in your mind? God’s Holy Spirit can bring sudden understanding of a new truth, or clearly reveal the solution to a hard decision.

Another way that God reveals Himself is through life’s tragedies. Can you think of a time when you were so sorrowful that you couldn’t even move—but then somehow found the strength and courage to go on, despite the pain? You may even have marveled at discovering your strength and wondered where it came from. It was from the One who is always within, always empowering. All we have to do is say, “Lord, I need You at this moment.” And He is there—always.

 

 

 

 

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Leap The Wall

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Our Daily Bread

Romans 12:14-21

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. —Proverbs 25:21

Sgt. Richard Kirkland was a Confederate soldier in the US Civil War (1861–1865). When the Union’s failed charge at Marye’s Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg left wounded soldiers abandoned in no-man’s land, Kirkland got permission to help them. Collecting canteens, he leaped the stone wall and bent over the first soldier to lend assistance. At great personal risk, the “Angel of Marye’s Heights” extended the mercy of Christ to enemy soldiers.

While few of us will face an enemy on the battlefield, those who suffer can be found all around us—people struggling against loneliness, loss, health issues, and sin. Their cries, muted by our many distractions, plead for mercy and comfort, for hope and help.

Kirkland’s example of Christlike compassion put action to Jesus’ command to “love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44). Paul expanded on that theme when he quotes Proverbs 25:21, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink” (Rom. 12:20). “Do not be overcome by evil,” he instructed us, “but overcome evil with good” (v.21).

Paul’s challenge compels us to emulate Sgt. Kirkland. Today is the day for us to “leap the wall” of safety to lend comfort from God to those in need. —Randy Kilgore

Father, give me the courage to reach out to those

I may not want to reach. Show Your love

through me in ways that will bring glory to You

and true peace in my corner of the world.

Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not. —Samuel Johnson

Bible in a year: Jeremiah 32-33; Hebrews 1

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Sovereign

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Ravi Z

For years, I never used the word “sovereign” as a noun. I knew it could be used in this way—”Like a sovereign,” writes Shakespeare “he radiates worth, his eyes lending a double majesty”—I just never did. But trial and tragedy have a way of waking us to words and realities overlooked. There was a time that whenever I closed my eyes to pray I was leveled by the image of the throne, and it was empty. And it was somewhere in the midst of this recurrent vision that I realized my neglect of the noun. Was God indeed the Sovereign who spoke and listened? I had often used the word as an adjective. But adjectives, like good moods, seem to come and go.

The prophet Jeremiah depicts a Sovereign that cannot come and go, simply because He is. For Jeremiah, God’s sovereignty is not a coat that can be taken off when all is going well or when all is going poorly. God does not cease to be the Sovereign though the world refuses to bow or “distant” seems a better adjective. And God’s words are not stripped of their sovereignty though no one is listening or no one responds. The Sovereign of all creation is always sovereign, active, and near, the prophet wants us to see; it is we who are inconsistent.

Jeremiah chapter 6 begins with an image of the Sovereign speaking to a people unwilling to listen, an honorable Judge whose words are dishonored. “To whom shall I speak?” the LORD inquires. The question is a lonely one, reflecting both the prophet who speaks and the Sovereign whose words are ignored. The inquiry also has the force of sarcasm: Why bother speaking to a people who won’t hear? But the words are not a commentary on God’s behavior; God is not throwing his hands up and suggesting the route of silence. Rather, it is a commentary on God’s words themselves, which are weighted with the compulsion to be heard. Though our ears are closed and we scorn his warnings, the Sovereign speaks and his words go forth with power. “God is always coming,” says Carlo Carretto. “God is always coming because He is life, and life has the unbridled force of creation. God comes because He is light and light cannot remain hidden.”(1) God’s decrees from the throne create and sustain the world. There is a person enthroned in every word, bidding the world’s response to every call and every sound.

Yet we listen with stubborn ears and apathetic wills. It is not a blind and stiff obedience God seeks, but a response appropriate for the Sovereign embodied in God’s words and concern for creation. The people of Israel were responding with formality in sacrifice while acting shamefully in other areas. Today we might respond the same, making nods to religion in public or private, but refusing to wholly bow to the Most High, and hence, settling for something less than real humanity. For in their failure to listen, the Israelites were losing their ability to perceive altogether. “They acted shamefully…yet they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush,” says Jeremiah.(2) In human failure to kneel before the Sovereign of all creation, we lose something of what it means to be human.

I don’t know why the throne was empty every time I closed my eyes some years ago. Perhaps I had removed God from the throne long before sorrow hit like a roaring sea and seemed to remove everything in its wake. Perhaps God was ruling from the rooms where we needed God most. I don’t know. But the emptiness of the throne forced me to reexamine the one who inhabits sovereignty itself. Carretto’s words once again hit the gist of such examining: “The true problem is this: Is God an autonomous presence before you, like you before your friend, the bridegroom before the bride, the Son before the Father? […] Can you meet God as a person on your road and prostrate yourself before Him as did Moses before the burning bush? […] Can you experience his presence in the dark intimacy of the temple as did the prophets? In short, is God the God of transcendence, and thus the God of prayer, the God of what lies beyond things, or is He only the God of immanence, revealing Himself in the fruition of matter, in the dynamics of history, in the promise to free mankind?”(3) Is God the Sovereign you will trust at the center of all things? Upon a throne high and lofty, God asks us to look again, calls us to walk in ancient paths, and promises rest for weary souls.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1974), 3.

(2) Jeremiah 6:15.

(3) Ibid., Intro.

 

Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg – Made Perfect in Weakness

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Alistair Begg

‘For my power is made perfect in weakness.’

2 Corinthians 12:9

A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches out to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, “I know that I will overcome-my own ability and my self-confidence will be enough for victory,” defeat is staring him in the face.

God will not enable the man who marches in his own strength. He who reckons on victory by such means has reckoned wrongly, for “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.”1

Those who go out to fight, boasting of their ability, will return with their banners trailing in the dust and their armor stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve Him in His own way and in His strength, or He will never accept their service.

Whatever a man does, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casts away; He will only reap corn the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love.

God will empty out all that you have before He will put His own into you; He will first clean out your granaries before He will fill them with the finest of wheat.

The river of God is full of water; but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs. God will have no strength used in His battles but the strength that He Himself imparts.

Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage, for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give you victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and you are being humbled to prepare you for being lifted up.

When I am weak then am I strong,

Grace is my shield and Christ my song.

1Zechariah 4:6

 

Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon – Tender words of terrible apprehension

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CharlesSpurgeon

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Psalm 9:17

Suggested Further Reading: Ezekiel 8:5-18

How often do you forget his presence too! In the midst of a crowd, you are conscious every one of you of the presence of man, but perhaps this very moment you are ignoring the fact that God is here. In your shop on the morrow how carefully you will take heed that your conduct is circumspect if the eye of your fellow-man is observing you. But before the presence of God, with the Eternal eye upon you, you can presume to practice the paltry tricks of trade or to do that which you would not have revealed to mortals for all the world; careful to shut the door, and draw the curtain, and hide yourselves in secret from men; strangely forgetting that when the curtain is drawn and the door is shut, God is there still. No walls can shut him out; no darkness can conceal the deed from his eye; he is everywhere and sees us in all things. Why, my hearers, we are all guilty in this respect in a measure; we forget the actual presence and the overlooking eye of God. We talk as we dare not talk if we were thinking that he heard us. We act as we would not act if we were conscious that God was there. We indulge in thoughts which we should cast out if we could but bear in perpetual remembrance the abiding presence of God, the Judge of the whole earth. Forgetting God is so common a sin, that the believer himself needs to repent of it, and ask to have it forgiven, while the unbeliever may solemnly confess this to be his crying sin, a piece of guilt to which he dare not profess innocence.

For meditation: The Christian should make a positive effort to do everything to the satisfaction of his unseen but seeing Lord (Ephesians 6:5-7). This was the principle that Joseph adopted (Genesis 39:9).

Sermon no. 344

4 November (1860)

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Gaining God’s Approval

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John MacArthur

“By [faith] the men of old gained approval” (Heb. 11:2).

The book Catch-22 tells of a squadron of World War II fliers stationed on the fictitious island of Pianos in the Mediterranean. Before a flier could transfer off the island, he had to complete 25 extremely dangerous missions over southern Europe.

One flier, Yosarian, was especially anxious to leave. After completing his twenty-fifth mission, his commanding officer began raising the number of qualifying missions. Insanity became the only justification for a transfer. But the commander decided that whomever feigned insanity to obtain a transfer simply proved his sanity by that sane act!

Realizing it was all a cruel game with no way out, Yosarian devised a plan to build a raft and float to Sweden. Even though there was a whole continent between him and Sweden and the ocean currents would take him in the opposite direction, he couldn’t be dissuaded. He took a leap into the absurd with a hopeless and impossible plan to escape a hopeless and impossible situation.

In their relentless quest for meaning in life, many people become spiritual Yosarians. Rejecting God, who is the only sure and rational answer to life, they jump headlong into alcohol, drugs, witchcraft, astrology, reincarnation, or countless other absurdities.

Many acknowledge God, but try to gain His approval through self-righteous deeds apart from true faith. In either case the results are the same: no faith, no salvation, no hope, no peace, and no assurance.

But those who take God at His word and approach Him in true faith receive His approval and enjoy His blessings. Theirs isn’t a blind leap into the absurd, but a living hope in the God who made man and who alone can fulfill man’s deepest longings. They know the joy and satisfaction of a life spent in service to Christ, and the peace and assurance that all is well–both now and for eternity.

Suggestions for Prayer:

Pray for those you know who have rejected God or are trying to gain His approval on their own. Explain to them the meaning and purpose Christ alone can bring to their lives.

For Further Study:

According to 2 Timothy 2:24-26, what is the spiritual state of those who oppose the gospel, and how are we to approach them?

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Little by Little

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Joyce meyer

And the Lord your God will clear out those nations before you, little by little; you may not consume them quickly, lest the beasts of the field increase among you.—Deuteronomy 7:22

Recently I thought about my life from the time I seriously began to follow Jesus Christ to the present. Had I known then—at the beginning of the journey—all the things God would take me through, I would probably have been afraid to sign up for the trip.

As I look back, however, I realize that God held my hand and let me advance in small steps. I had times of great ¬discouragement—as we all do. I remember times of bitter tears over my personal failures. But God kept nudging me forward.

That’s the secret of living the victorious Christian life—we move ahead little by little. It’s an inching forward over months and years. Most of us can understand that. The same is true in the battle for the mind. We don’t roust Satan in one big blow and then live in victory forever after. We win one small battle, and then we’re ready to move on to the next one. We may have a few major victories that come suddenly, but not many of them. The fight to destroy Satan’s strongholds comes mostly by daily, doggedly, moving ahead.

The first time I thought of that fact, it was discouraging, until I realized the wisdom of God. After the Jews left Egypt and wandered in the wilderness, God spoke to them before they went into the Promised Land. It was a special land—fertile, beautiful, and promised to them. But in the more than 400 years since Jacob and his sons had left the land, others had moved in and occupied land that didn’t belong to them.

For the children of Israel, it wasn’t merely a matter of going in and settling down. They had to fight for every foot of ground—even though it was their inheritance. That’s how the spiritual principle works on every level. God has the blessings out there waiting for us, but it’s up to us to go in and take the land. Just as it was for the Jews of old, it is a battle.

In the verse at the beginning of this chapter, God spoke of the beasts of the field. There were many wild animals in the land, and it could have been dangerous. But what if we thought of the beasts as pride? What if God suddenly gave us full, complete victory, and we never struggled again; how would that affect us? Surely pride would creep in.

Our attitude then would be to look down on others who have not been as victorious as we have been. We may not express our condescension in words, but won’t those we disdain sense that we think we’re superior? And, truthfully, wouldn’t we feel superior. We’ve made it; those poor souls are still struggling.

God has a wonderful plan for each of us, but it never comes with just one major victory, so that we never struggle again. Instead, it’s an ongoing warfare, and we must remain vigilant and be aware of the attacks of the enemy.

Another aspect is that because we move ahead little by little, it makes us savor every victory. Each time we overcome or destroy one of Satan’s strongholds, we rejoice. We can remain in a constant state of thanksgiving. If we’ve had only one victory, and that was thirty years ago, how dull our lives would be. Or worse yet, how easy it would be for us to take God for granted. Isn’t it better to serve a God who takes us slowly forward, always showing us the way, always encouraging us? We always have new horizons to reach for, and that makes our journey with God exciting!

God, please forgive me for wanting all the victory right now. Help me realize that as I struggle and call on You, I see Your wonderful, loving, and caring hand taking me forward—little by little. For that, I’m so grateful. Amen.

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Prayer Has Great Power

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dr_bright

“Admit your faults to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous man has great power and wonderful results” (James 5:16).

“I can take my telescope and look millions and millions of miles into space,” said the great scientist Sir Issac Newton , “but I can lay it aside and go into my room, shut the door, get down on my knees in earnest prayer, and see more of heaven and get closer to God than I can assisted by all the telescopes and material agencies on earth.”

Among many other things, the carnal Christian is characterized by a poor prayer life. The spiritual Christian, on the other hand, is characterized by an effective fruitful prayer life.

Prayer is simply communicating with God by listening as well as talking. The acrostic ACTS is helpful in recalling the various components of effective prayer, though the order is not necessarily rigid.

“A” is for adoration – worship of God, first for who He is; and second for all of His benefits. He alone is worthy of our adoration and praise.

“C” stands for confession. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Sometimes this component should take priority, especially for the unbeliever and the disobedient believer, because God does not hear the prayers of the disobedient until they confess. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalms 66:18, KJV).

“T” is for thanksgiving – gratitude to God for His blessings.

“S” represents supplication – expressing our petitions to God for individuals and specific things and events.

Bible Reading: James 5:13-18

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: I will claim great power and wonderful results for supernatural living by a righteous life and by giving priority to prayer. I will remember to bring my adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication to God throughout the day

 

 

Presidential Prayer Team

Presidential Prayer Team; C.P. – People Presents

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ppt_seal01

November. Christmas plans begin. Visions of bicycles, electronic gizmos and longed-for jeans may be dancing in your head as you think about those perfect gifts you will purchase for friends and family.

I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

Romans 1:8

Ah, but first comes Thanksgiving. You put a lot of thought into Christmas gifts for people you care about…but do you realize the people in your life are God’s gift to you? In today’s verse, Paul thanks God for the Christians in Rome and for their world-renowned faith. He prayed that he would be able to visit them so they’d mutually encourage each other.

As thanksgiving approaches, think about all the people the Lord has put into your life – and pray for wisdom to be a blessing to them in some way. Remember to be grateful for your friends and family, your pastor and fellow church members, as well as associates in support groups and professional organizations, and all the people who serve you daily. Finally, thank God for the people who serve your country…whether in leadership, in the armed forces or at menial government jobs. Pray they will get to know God’s greatest “people gift,” Jesus.

Recommended Reading: John 3:16-21

Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie – Just in Time

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greglaurie

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. —1 Corinthians 10:13

In her book, The Hiding Place, Nazi concentration camp survivor Corrie ten Boom recalls the story of how, as a young girl, she struggled with the prospect of having loved ones die.

Her father wisely took her aside and asked, “Corrie, when you and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?”

“Why, just before we get on the train.”

“Exactly,” her father said. “And our wise Father knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”

Sometimes we wonder, What if I am tested above my ability to endure? What if I am tempted above my capacity to resist? You never will be because God knows your breaking point. As far as temptation goes, 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us, “God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.” There is always a way out. Sometimes it is as simple as the door.

But what if God sends me a trial that I can’t get through? Often I talk to people who are going through very difficult suffering, and I ask myself, Would I have the attitude they have if I were going through that? Here is my response: If God would ask me to do it, then He would give me the strength to do it.

God will give you the strength to face what you have to face. You will have what you need when you need it. So don’t worry about it. Just trust God. He is in control.

 

Max Lucado

Max Lucado – Simply “Church”

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Max Lucado

The church names we banter about?  They don’t exist in heaven.  Because it’s not the denomination that saves you.  And I wonder, if there’re no denominations in heaven, why do we have denominations on earth?

I know this is a crazy thought—but what would happen if all the churches agreed, on a given day, to change their names simply to “church?”  And then when people chose which church to attend, they wouldn’t do so by the sign outside, they’d do so by the hearts of the people inside.

And then, when people were asked what church they attended, their answer wouldn’t be a label but just a location. And then, we Christians wouldn’t be known for what divides us; instead we’d be known for what unites us—our common Father.

Crazy idea?  Perhaps.   But I think God would like it.  It was His idea to begin with!

from Lucado Inspirational Reader