Daily Archives: July 24, 2017

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley –Encouraging the Pastor

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2 Timothy 1:1-6

Do you attend church? If so, God has placed a person in your life whose job it is to train you in righteousness and speak the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it. You are blessed to have a pastor who loves you and cares about your spiritual well-being. He needs to know you care about him too.

Many churchgoers neglect to encourage the pastor, but being aware of his needs is an important part of belonging to the body of Christ. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul models the way we’re to encourage those who minister.

  1. Tell your pastor you appreciate him. There’s nothing more uplifting to a person’s heart than to know someone else cares. Words are certainly valuable, but actions can speak even more loudly. So intentionally seek ways to demonstrate your love for your minister.
  2. Express confidence in the pastor. Let him know you recognize the sincerity of his faith and appreciate his commitment to speak scriptural truths into your life.
  3. Affirm the call of God on his life. Work with your pastor; respond to him in a way that shows you understand he’s been called to minister and therefore has God’s hand upon him. And when you experience the Lord working through him, let him know.

Above all, pray for your pastor. Don’t assume that others in the church are praying or that a spiritual leader doesn’t need intercession. The opposite is true. The devil would like to thwart effective ministering, but you can help to defend your shepherd as he tends the flock.

Bible in One Year: Isaiah 8-10

 

http://www.intouch.org/

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread — Building Community

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Read: Ephesians 2:19–3:11

Bible in a Year: Psalms 35–36; Acts 25

This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. —Ephesians 3:6

“Community” is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives, says Henri Nouwen. Often we surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, which forms a club or a clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.

The Christian church was the first institution in history to bring together on equal footing Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free. The apostle Paul waxed eloquent on this “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God.” By forming a community out of diverse members, Paul said, we have the opportunity to capture the attention of the world and even the supernatural world beyond (Eph. 3:9-10).

In some ways the church has sadly failed in this assignment. Still, church is the one place I visit that brings together generations: infants still held in their mothers’ arms, children who squirm and giggle at all the wrong times, responsible adults who know how to act appropriately at all times, and those who may drift asleep if the preacher drones on too long.

If we want the community experience God is offering to us, we have reason to seek a congregation of people “not like us.” —Philip Yancey

Lord, remind us that the church is Your work, and You have brought us together for Your good purposes. Help us extend grace to others.

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world.  G. K. Chesterton

 

http://www.odb.org

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Is Religion Violent?

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In a 2002 article in The Guardian, author Salman Rushdie, inspired by bouts of violence in his native India, articulated a now-common view on religion. The article was titled, “Religion, as ever, is the poison in India’s blood.” In it, Rushdie outlined the familiar stance of the vociferous new atheists, bidding the world to stop speaking of religion in the fashionable language of “respect” and skating around the obvious conclusions about both God and religion. He writes:

“What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion’s dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! […] India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.“(1)

Rushdie’s voice is merely one among many in the increasingly prevalent conversation about God, religion, and violence. Against Christianity, the critiques come quite specifically. Richard Dawkins describes the Christian story as vicious, sado-masochistic, and repellent, symptomatic of a violent God, a Bible full of violence, and followers willing to overlook that violence, or worse, to embrace it. For Dawkins and his conspirators, God is the problem that initiates the problem of violence: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can be desensitized to their horror.”(2)

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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Pray About Everything

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So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.—Matthew 6:34

Someone once said that “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.” Trying to solve tomorrow’s problems today only steals the energy God has prearranged for you to enjoy today. Don’t waste your time worrying! It is vain and useless. Don’t be like the bassoon player who went up to his conductor and nervously said that he could not reach the high E-flat. His conductor just smiled and replied, “Don’t worry. There is no E-flat in your music tonight.” Many of our worries are like that—unfounded and unnecessary.

Worry is the end of faith, and faith is the end of worry. You can only be a confident woman once you remove fear and worry from your life, and it starts with prayer. Prayer opens the door for God to get involved and meet our needs. The apostle Paul said we are to be anxious for nothing, but in all things, by praying, we will experience the peace of God (see Philippians 4:6-7). He didn’t say in “some” things; he didn’t say in “one” thing, but he said in “everything.” Prayer must replace our worry.

Lord, I open the door and invite You into all the affairs of my life. I have needs that only You can meet, and I know it’s useless to worry about them. Today I commit my needs to You and will rest my faith in You. Amen.

From the book The Confident Woman Devotional: 365 Daily Devotions by Joyce Meyer.

 

http://www.joycemeyer.org

Campus Crusade for Christ

Campus Crusade for Christ; Bill Bright – Can’t Keep on Sinning

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“The person who has been born into God’s family does not make a practice of sinning, because now God’s life is in him; so he can’t keep on sinning, for this new life has been born into him and controls him – he has been born again” (1 John 3:9).

I am sobered by the very thought that, having served the Lord for more than 30 exciting, wonderful, fruitful years, I might yet dishonor His name and bring disgrace to His cause. I know what has happened to other brothers and sisters in Christ – some of whom had apparently at one time been Spirit- filled Christian leaders, and I know that I too could fail the Lord if I do not continue to trust and obey Him. Even the apostle Paul lived in reverential fear that he might dishonor the name and cause of our Lord.

“So be careful. If you are thinking, ‘Oh, I would never behave like that,’ let this be a warning to you. For you too may fall into sin. But remember this: The wrong desires that come into your life aren’t anything new and different. Many others have faced exactly the same problems before you. And no temptation is irresistible.

“You can trust God to keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it, for He has promised this and will do what He says. He will show you how to escape temptation’s power so that you can bear up patiently against it” (1 Corinthians 10:12,13).

For many years it has been my prayer, as I pray on the offensive, “Oh, God, if there is a possibility that I may dishonor or disgrace Your name by becoming involved in a moral, financial or any other kind of scandal that you would discredit my ministry and nullify my love and witness for You, I would rather You take my life first before such a thing could happen.”

The Scripture warns all believers that any one of them, too, could fall. No one reaches the place of spiritual maturity or perfection where he can say, “I don’t need the Lord’s help anymore.” The only one who can enable us to live victorious lives is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Bible Reading: I John 2:21-29

TODAY’S ACTION POINT: At the very first sign of yielding to Satan in any way, large or small, I will remind the Lord of my utter dependence on Him and I will claim by faith His power to live a supernatural life.

 

http://www.cru.org

Max Lucado

Max Lucado – God, Our Refuge

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Refuge is a favorite word of David’s. You will count as many as forty-plus appearances in some versions of the Bible. But never did David use the word more poignantly than in Psalm 57. The introduction to the passage explains its background…“A song of David when he fled from Saul into the cave.” Lost in shadows and thought, he has nowhere to turn. To go home, he endangers his family. To go to the tabernacle, he imperils the priests. Saul will kill him. Here he sits, all alone. But then he remembers he is not. And from the recesses of the cave a sweet voice floats:

“Be merciful to me, O God! For my soul trusts in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I make my refuge.” (Psalm 57:1)

Make God your refuge. Let Him be the foundation on which you stand!

From Facing Your Giants

For more inspirational messages please visit Max Lucado.

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Denison Forum

Denison Forum – Why a typo in Wendy’s sign is ‘divine comedy’

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“Divine comedy” is how AP News describes a typographical error in a Wendy’s sign. The fast-food restaurant in Palm Beach County, Florida, recently installed a sign reading, “All of Wendy’s sins off one word—FRESH.” The word was supposed to be “spins.”

While the restaurant could use a better proofreader, its sentiment is interesting. What word does your life “spin off”?

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He has been hired by companies such as Google, Wells Fargo, and Warner Brothers to talk about managing people. In an interview published yesterday, he made a statement that is both simple and significant: “What we spend the majority of our waking lives doing should be something we find really valuable and rewarding.”

You would think it wouldn’t take a best-selling psychologist to point out this fact. But are you following his advice? What mission defines your life?

Here’s a better question: Whose mission defines your life?

Jordan Spieth won yesterday’s British Open in record fashion. I watched the tournament on television and was astounded by his performance over the last five holes. His temperament in facing adversity was absolutely remarkable. Spieth is not yet twenty-four years old, but his maturity is already legendary.

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