Tag Archives: lord jesus christ

Charles Spurgeon – The Exodus

December 9, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the self same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.” Exodus 12:41

Suggested Further Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-11

It is our firm conviction and increasing belief, that the historical books of Scripture were intended to teach us spiritual things by types and figures. We believe that every portion of Scripture history is not only a faithful transcript of what did actually happen, but also a shadow of what happens spiritually in the dealings of God with his people, or in the dispensations of his grace towards the world at large. We do not look upon the historical books of Scripture as being mere rolls of history, such as profane authors might have written, but we regard them as being most true and infallible records of the past, and also most bright and glorious foreshadowings of the future, or else most wondrous metaphors and marvellous illustrations of things which are verily received among us, and most truly felt in the Christian heart. We may be wrong—we believe we are not; at any rate, the very error has given us instruction, and our mistake has afforded us comfort. We look upon the book of Exodus as being a book of types of the deliverances which God will give to his elect people; not only as a history of what he has done, in bringing them out of Egypt by smiting the first-born, leading them through the Red Sea, and guiding them through the wilderness, but also as a picture of his faithful dealings with all his people, whom by the blood of Christ he separates from the Egyptians, and by his strong and mighty hand takes out of the house of their bondage and out of the land of their slavery.

For meditation: Are you getting as much out of the Old Testament as you should? It is full of the Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 24:27)! While it may be wrong and confusing to see types in every verse or action, if you major on the types which are identified and applied in the New Testament you cannot go far wrong.

Sermon no. 55

9 December (1855)

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – The Guidance of the Holy Spirit

December 8, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

How does the Holy Spirit guide us? How much does He control our actions? Does He still speak to believers, or was personal communication only for Biblical times?

God does not want us to be confused about this vital area. In talking to His disciples about the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (John 16:13, emphasis added).

Let’s consider four key truths about the leadership of the Holy Spirit:

1. The Holy Spirit will guide us.

Jesus doesn’t promise that the Holy Spirit will control us. He says He will guide us.

Granted, there are times when I wish the Holy Spirit would control me. For instance, when I am tempted. Or when I become so task oriented that I become insensitive. Or when it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I need to study, but everything in me wants to grab my camera and head for the mountains. Life would be much easier if the Holy Spirit would take control of me.

But He is our guide, not our controller. We never lose our ability to choose to follow His leading. As a result, we are always responsible for our words and actions.

2. The Holy Spirit is a trustworthy guide.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, helps believers discern between what is true and what is not; what is wise and what is foolish; what is best and what is simply OK. Each day is full of decisions. Most of our decisions concern issues not clearly spelled out in the Scriptures, for example, where to attend school, whether to hire a particular applicant, how much to budget for vacation, on and on it goes.

As you are inundated with the details of everyday living, the Holy Spirit will guide you. He will give you that extra on-the-spot sense of discernment you need to make both big and small decisions. As you develop a greater sensitivity to His guidance, you will worry much less about the decisions you make. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is a trustworthy guide.

3. The Holy Spirit is God’s mouthpiece to believers.

The Holy Spirit does not speak on His own. Like Christ, this member of the Trinity has willingly submitted to the authority of the Father. Everything He communicates to us is directly from the Father: “He will not speak on His own initiative” (John 16:13).

Our heavenly Father has chosen to communicate to His children through the Holy Spirit (Acts 11:12). He is God’s mouthpiece to believers. When the Father chooses to speak directly to you, it will be through the Holy Spirit.

When you think about it, this really makes perfect sense. After all, where does the Holy Spirit reside? In you! And in me! Therefore, He is the perfect candidate for communicating God’s will to Christians. Living inside us, He has direct access to our minds, emotions, and consciences.

4. The Holy Spirit speaks.

The question of whether God still speaks today is one that has spawned numerous books, articles, and lectures. It is not my purpose to present a tightly woven argument about why I believe He still speaks today. Suffice it to say, I do believe God, through the Holy Spirit, communicates directly with believers. No, I don’t write these revelations in the back of my Bible and call them inspired. Neither do I run around telling everybody what “God told me.”

My experience is that the Holy Spirit, at the prompting of the heavenly Father, still communicates with believers today. How does He do that? The Holy Spirit indwells me. He doesn’t need my ears. What He needs is a listening heart and a renewed mind.

The book of Acts records several occasions when the Holy Spirit spoke to Paul and Peter (11:12; 13:2; 16:6; 20:23). It can’t be denied that those men had a special gift and call on their lives. But the same Holy Spirit who indwelt those men indwells every believer. Just as they needed divine direction at critical times in their lives, we need it today.

In his letters to the Christians in Rome and Galatia, the Apostle Paul refers to believers as “led by the Spirit” (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18). If we are going to be led by the Holy Spirit, we can only assume that He is willing (and able) to communicate with us.

How does God communicate with us today? The Lord speaks through the voice of His Spirit, who resides within us. We may have to seek His face for a season; other times, we can sense His direction immediately. No matter what, the Holy Spirit is a trustworthy guide.

Adapted from “The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life,” by Charles F. Stanley, 1992.

Related Resources

Our Daily Bread — Serious Fear

December 8, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Luke 2:8-20

Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. —Luke 2:10

After weeks of preparation by the children’s choir, the night had finally arrived for our annual Christmas musical in 1983. The costumed children began filing into the auditorium when suddenly we heard a ruckus at the back door. My wife and I turned to look and saw our own little Matt. Sobbing loudly and with a look of sheer terror on his face, he had a death grip on the door handle. He refused to enter the auditorium. After much negotiating, the director finally told him he didn’t have to go on stage. Instead, Matt sat with us, and soon his fears began to subside.

Although we don’t usually identify Christmas as a time of fear, there was plenty of it on the night of Christ’s birth. Luke says, “Behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid” (Luke 2:9). The sight of the angelic messenger was more than the shepherds could process. But the angel reassured them: “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (v.10).

In a world full of fear, we need to remember that Jesus came to be the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6). We desperately need His peace. As we look to Him, He will ease our fears and calm our hearts. —Bill Crowder

Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Risen with healing in His wings. —Wesley

God incarnate is the end of fear. —F. B. Meyer

Bible in a year: Daniel 8-10; 3 John

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Christ’s Radiance and Representation

December 8, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

“He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Heb. 1:3).

Just as the rays of the sun give light, warmth, life, and growth to the earth, so Jesus Christ is the glorious light of God shining into the hearts of men and women. As “the radiance of God’s glory,” Jesus expresses God to us. No one can see God in HIs full glory; no one ever will. The radiance of that glory that reaches us from God appears in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Just as the sun was never without and can never be separated from its brightness, so God was never without and cannot be separated from the glory of Christ. Never was God without Him or He without God, and never in any way can He be separated from God. Yet the brightness of the sun is not the sun, and neither is Jesus exactly the same as God in that sense. He is fully and absolutely God, yet as a distinct Person within the triune Godhead.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). As the radiance of God’s glory, Christ can transmit that light into your life and mine so that we can radiate the glory of God to a dark world.

In using the term “exact representation” to describe Christ’s relationship to God’s nature, the writer employs terminology usually associated with an impression reproduced on a seal by a die or stamp. Jesus Christ is the reproduction of God–the perfect, personal imprint of God in time and space.

How wonderful to realize that Jesus Christ, who is both the full expression of God and exact reproduction of God’s nature in human history, can come into our lives and give us light to see and to know God! His light is the source of our spiritual life. And His light gives us purpose, meaning, happiness, peace, joy, fellowship, everything–for all eternity.

Suggestion for Prayer:

Thank God that He determined to become a man so we could know what He is like.

For Further Study:

Read 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 and note who allows people to see or not see spiritually.

Presidential Prayer Team

Presidential Prayer Team; P.G. – Prioritized Place

December 8, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Do you ever wonder why it seems like you’re always facing one problem or another? Perhaps temptations get the better of you, or you’re driven to anger and bitterness because prayers seem to go unanswered. Could it be you’re not spending enough time reading your Bible?

The word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

I John 2:14

Today’s verse reminds you of one of the benefits of letting God’s word abide in you – you will overcome evil. Yet Scripture will only take up residence in your life if you let it in, and the only way you can do that is to prioritize it and give it the rightful place it deserves at the top of your daily routine.

During this holiday season, develop a new habit by setting aside specific time to saturate yourself with the gift of God’s love as found in His Word. Allow the abundance of His grace to flood into your soul. Memorize something new. Enjoy spiritual songs. Play a Scripture CD in your car. The more you abide in the Word, the more it will abide in you!

In a nation where many have lost their way, pray that this will be a season of discovering Jesus for who He really is – Savior, Lord and friend. Ask for this same discovery to happen among your nation’s leaders as well.

Alistair Begg – The Worst Made the Best

December 7, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

God chose what is low and despised in the world.

1 Corinthians 1:28

Walk the streets by moonlight, if you dare, and you will see sinners then. Watch when the night is dark, and the wind is howling, and the thief is hiding in the door, and you will see sinners then. Go to the jail, and walk through the wards, and notice the men with heavy overhanging brows, men whom you would not like to meet at night, and there are sinners there. Go to the reformatories, and note those who have betrayed a rampant juvenile depravity, and you will see sinners there.

Go where you will, you need not ransack the earth to find sinners, for they are common enough; you may find them in every lane and street of every city and town and village and hamlet. It is for such that Jesus died.

If you will select for me the grossest specimen of humanity, if he be but born of woman, I will still have hope for him, because Jesus Christ came to seek and to save sinners. Electing love has selected some of the worst to be made the best.

Pebbles from the brook are turned by grace into jewels for the royal crown. Worthless dross He transforms into pure gold. Redeeming love has set apart many of the worst of mankind to be the reward of the Savior’s passion.

Effectual grace calls deep-dyed sinners to sit at the table of mercy, and therefore none of us should despair.

Reader, by that love looking out of Jesus’ tearful eyes, by that love streaming from those bleeding wounds, by that faithful love, that strong love, that pure, disinterested, and abiding love, by the heart and by the tender compassion of the Savior, we urge you not to turn away as though it was nothing to you.

Rather, believe on Him and you will be saved. Trust your soul with Him, and He will bring you to His Father’s right hand in everlasting glory.

Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon – The Destroyer destroyed

December 6, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Hebrews 2:14

Suggested Further Reading: Genesis 3:1-15

At last the day arrived; it was telegraphed to the court of hell that at last Christ would die. They rung their bells with hellish mirth and joy. “He will die now,” said he; “Judas has taken the thirty pieces of silver. Let those scribes and Pharisees get him, they will no more let him go than the spider will a poor unfortunate fly. He is safe now.” And the devil laughed for very glee, when he saw the Saviour stand before Pilate’s bar. And when it was said, “Let him be crucified,” then his joy knew no bounds, except that bound which his own misery must ever set to it. As far as he could, he revelled in what was to him a delightful thought, that the Lord of glory was about to die. In death, as Christ was seen of angels, he was seen of devils too; and that dreary march from Pilate’s palace to the cross was one which devils saw with extraordinary interest. And when they saw him on the cross, there stood the exulting fiend, smiling to himself. “Ah! I have the King of Glory now in my dominions; I have the power of death, and I have the power over the Lord Jesus.” He exerted that power, till the Lord Jesus had to cry out in bitter anguish, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But, how short-lived was hellish victory! How brief was the Satanic triumph! He died; and “It is finished!” shook the gates of hell. Down from the cross the conqueror leaped, pursued the fiend with thunder-bolts of wrath; swift to the shades of hell the fiend did fly, and swift descending went the conqueror after him.

For meditation: The powers of darkness enjoyed only an hour of apparent victory over the Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 22:53), but it resulted in his victory procession with them on public display as his captives (Colossians 2:15).

Sermon no. 166

6 December (1857)

Presidential Prayer Team

Presidential Prayer Team; C.H. – Perfect Present

December 6, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

As Christmas nears, people spend hours online and in stores searching for the perfect gift. Would Sue like a picture frame or turquoise earrings? Should you buy Papa John a pair of leather gloves or frame a picture of the grandkids? Everyone wants to give a gift that lasts – something to be cherished for years to come. Inevitably, though, many of those items will be the wrong size or color and others may break in days. “They just don’t make things like they used to,” you think. “Nothing lasts forever.”

The word of the Lord remains forever.

I Peter 1:25

Or does it? As you shop and open gifts to celebrate the birth of your Savior, remember today’s verse. God’s word “remains forever.” It will not break. It won’t shrink. It always fits. It doesn’t even need batteries.

The Bible is a love letter from God to you. As you shop, cook and attend holiday festivities, take time each day to savor the perfect present from your Heavenly Father. Reflect on His words. Read the story of Christ’s birth with your family. Ask God to speak as you read the Bible, and then pray He’ll help President Obama find wisdom and peace from His enduring, eternal words.

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Evidence

December 5, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A charge that some people make is that religion in general and Christianity in particular are irrational. It’s ridiculous to believe in God, they say; there’s no evidence that God even exists! Richard Dawkins, in his best selling book The God Delusion, makes this very claim, saying that faith in God is just like belief in Santa Claus!

But of course, there’s a major problem with comparing faith in God to belief in Santa Claus. I don’t know anybody who came to believe in Santa Claus in adulthood. Yet I know many Christians—often former atheists—who discovered God as adults. This alone should tell you that God and Santa are utterly different. (If they weren’t, one wonders why Richard Dawkins didn’t write “The Santa Delusion.”) Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of great thinkers— now, and throughout history, have believed in God. That alone suggests that belief in God is hardly “irrational.”

But what about the other claim: “You can’t prove God exists!” What might a believing person say to skeptics? Well, I might start by gently pointing out that there are many good arguments that, whilst not proving God exists, certainly suggest God’s existence is extremely likely. There are philosophical arguments, such as the cosmological argument: (i) everything that begins to exist had a cause; (ii) the universe began to exist; (iii) therefore the universe had a cause. Most philosophers would say that’s a powerful argument.

There are also arguments from design. The universe and the laws of nature look, as one physicist once put it, suspiciously like a put up job. Or we might talk about the purpose that seems to be inherent in life. Most of us intuitively know that life has meaning and purpose. Indeed, a question one might fire back at our atheist friends concerns this very point: how does the atheist avoid nihilism, the view that life is meaningless, pointless, and nothing really matters. The question for the nihilist becomes “Why not suicide”?

The Christian would also want to point out that the deepest things that matter to us as humans all lie beyond the physical and the material: morality and meaning, love and friendship, beauty and truth. All of these don’t fit happily with atheism: “Darwinian mistakes,” Richard Dawkins once called them. That to me is tragic.

But perhaps the most powerful evidence for God is the one the Bible uses most consistently. The Bible doesn’t offer an argument for God, rather it points to God’s involvement in the world. Most significantly, that would be how, in the person of Jesus Christ, the God who created the world took on flesh and stepped into our world to rescue and save it. This is not a distant, remote, theoretical God, but a God who is very much alive. That’s a quite different proposition—and if that God exists, that changes everything. C. S. Lewis put it this way: “I believe in Christianity in the same way as I believe that the sun has risen. Not because I see it, but that by it, I see everything else.”

Andy Bannister is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – God’s Final Revelation

December 5, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

God’s Final Revelation

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2).

A Samaritan woman declared, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us” (John 4:25). The expectation of that day, even among the Samaritans, was that Messiah would unfold the full and final revelation of God. The Holy Spirit, through the writer of Hebrews, affirms that to be true: “God . . . in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2).

The Old Testament had given divine revelation in bits and pieces. Every piece was true, yet incomplete. But When Jesus came, the whole picture became clear, and though rejected by His own people, He was, in fact, the fulfillment of the messianic hope they had cherished for so many centuries.

The Old Testament age of promise ended when Jesus arrived. He is God’s final word: “As many as may be the promises of God, in Him they are yes; wherefore also by Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20).

God fully expressed Himself in His Son. That’s why John said, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:14, 18). Paul added that in Christ “all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).

The practical implications of that truth are staggering. Since Christ is the fullness of divine revelation, you need nothing more. In Him you have been made complete (Col. 2:10), and have been granted everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3). His Word is sufficient, needing no additions or amendments.

Suggestion for Prayer:

Ask God to teach you how to rely more fully on your resources in Christ.

For Further Study:

Read John 1:1-18 as a reminder of the fullness of God’s revelation in His Son.

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Incarnate

December 4, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the world’s largest maximum-security prisons, an eighteen-thousand acre habitat to people who have committed horrible crimes. It houses roughly five thousand inmates, more than half of which are serving life sentences. Death looms large at Angola; ninety-four percent of inmates who enter are expected to die while incarcerated. The fear of dying alone in prison, coupled with the reality that for many inmates their first encounter with death was committing murder, makes death a weighted subject, often locked up in anger, guilt, and dread.

For a few, however, the Angola Hospice volunteer program has drastically changed this. In 1998, equipped with a variety of staff trustees and inmate volunteers, the LSP hospice opened its doors to its first terminally ill inmate. Today it is recognized as one of the best programs of its kind. Giving inmate volunteers a role in the creation of the hospice and in the primary care during the dying process, inmates find themselves in the position to tangibly affect the lives of others by being present, by giving a hand, by offering dignity to the dying. Reckoning with death as a fate that awaits all of humanity as they care for dying friends and strangers, the men often gradually let go of hardened demeanors. As one man notes, “I’ve seen guys that used to run around Angola, and want to fight and drug up, actually cry and be heartbroken over the patient.”(1) Another describes being present in the lives of the dying and how much this takes from the living. “But it puts a lot in you,” he adds. A third inmate describes how caring for strangers on the brink of death has put an end to his lifelong anger and helped him to confront his guilt with honesty.

It may seem for some an odd story as a means of examining the story of Christmas, but in some ways it is the only story to ever truly introduce the story of Christmas: broken, guilty souls longing for someone to be present. As martyred archbishop Oscar Romero once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those most aware they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas. For the men at Angola who stare death in the eyes and realize the tender importance of presence, for the child whose mother left and whose father was never there, for the melancholic soul that laments the evils of a fallen world, the Incarnation is the only story that touches every pain, every lost hope, every ounce of our guilt, every joy that ever matters. Where other creeds fail, Christmas, in essence, is about coming poor and weary, guilty and famished to the very scene in history where God reached down and touched the world by stepping into it.

The Incarnation is hard to dismiss out of hand because it so radically comes near our needs. Into the world of living and dying the arrival of Christ as a child turns fears of isolation, weakness, and condemnation on their heads. C.S. Lewis describes the doctrine of the Incarnation as a story that gets under our skin unlike any other creed, religion, or theory. “[The Incarnation] digs beneath the surface, works through the rest of our knowledge by unexpected channels, harmonises best with our deepest apprehensions… and undermines our superficial opinions. It has little to say to the man who is still certain that everything is going to the dogs, or that everything is getting better and better, or that everything is God, or that everything is electricity. Its hour comes when these wholesale creeds have begun to fail us.”(2) Standing over the precipices of the things that matter, nothing matters more than that there is a loving, forgiving, eager God who draws near.

The great hope of the Incarnation is that God comes for us. God is aware and Christ is present, having come in flesh, and it changes everything. “[I]f accepted,” writes Lewis, “[the Incarnation] illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die,…[and] covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.”(3) The coming of Christ as an infant in Bethlehem puts flesh on humanity’s worth and puts God in humanity’s weakness. To the captive, there is no other freedom.

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

(1) Stephen Kiernan, Last Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2006), 274.

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 282.

(3) Ibid.

John MacArthur

John MacArthur – Progressive Revelation

December 4, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

Progressive Revelation

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2).

When Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets [the Old Testament]; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17), He was affirming that Scripture progressed from promise to fulfillment, from partial to complete. We call that progressive revelation.

For example, the Old Testament anticipated Christ’s coming; the New Testament records His coming. The Old Testament writers didn’t understand everything they wrote because it didn’t always apply to their day. That’s why Peter said, “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:10-12).

Progressive revelation doesn’t at all imply that the Old Testament is inaccurate. The distinction isn’t in the rightness or wrongness of the revelation, but in its completeness. Just as a child progresses from letters to words to sentences, so God’s revelation progressed from types, ceremonies, and prophecies to final completion in Jesus Christ and the New Testament.

Thought incomplete by New Testament standards, the Old Testament is nonetheless fully inspired by God. That’s affirmed often in the New Testament. Peter tells us that no human writer of the Old Testament wrote of his own will, but only as he was directed by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). Paul added that “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, [and] for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, emphasis added).

The Old Testament isn’t all of God’s truth, but all of it is true. And as you progress from the Old to the New, you see God’s character and redemptive plan unfolding in greater detail.

Suggestion for Prayer:

Praise God for the fullness of revelation you enjoy in Scripture.

For Further Study:

Memorize 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – The Power Within

December 3, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

Acts 1:6-9

The pressure is on. At times it seems that the problems in our lives are multiplying, and there can be enormous temptation to choose ungodly solutions. If we are to make good decisions, we need divine power and wisdom. The way to obtain that, according to James 1:5, is to ask God, who longs to bestow it on all who have yielded to His plan.

Stop to consider the potential available and already residing within each believer. The Holy Spirit’s power—which we see in the work of Jesus Christ, who resisted the Devil’s temptations, raised Lazarus from the dead, and chose God’s will over His own (Luke 22:42)—produces Christlike character in us. It’s not something we can harness or turn on and off at will. Rather, the Spirit of God knows exactly when and how to utilize it in our life.

One of God’s primary uses for this power is to cultivate spiritual fruit in His followers (Gal. 5:22-23). Unbelievers are attracted to the light of Jesus within us when we demonstrate inner quietness and steadiness in the face of difficulty. They recognize Spirit-filled behavior is not the typical human reaction. When spiritual fruit is revealed in our lives, it is like shouting the message, “Jesus is real!”

Divine power gives us the authority as well as the spiritual energy needed to carry out God’s plan. The Holy Spirit releases His power so that our lives glorify the Father and demonstrate that God does rescue and transform people through His Son Jesus Christ. Won’t you yield to the Spirit’s control so that He may work dynamically in your life and circumstances?

Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg – Free from the Slightest Flaw

December 3, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

There is no flaw in you.

Song of Songs 4:7

Having pronounced His Church positively full of beauty, our Lord confirms His praise by a precious negative: “There is no flaw in you.” As if the thought occurred to the Bridegroom that the complaining world would insinuate that He had only highlighted her good parts and had purposely not mentioned those features that were deformed or defiled, in summary He declares her universally and entirely beautiful and utterly devoid of flaws.

A spot can easily be removed and is the very least thing that can disfigure beauty, but even from this little blemish the believer is delivered in his Lord’s sight. If He had said there is no hideous scar, no horrible deformity, no deadly ulcer, we might even then have marveled; but when He testifies that she is free from the slightest flaw, all these other forms of defilement are included, and the depth of wonder is increased.

If He had simply promised to remove all flaws later on, we would still have eternal reason for joy; but when He speaks of it as already done, it fills us with a deep sense of satisfaction and delight. My soul, here is spiritual food for you; digest it properly, and be satisfied with the royal provision.

Christ Jesus has no quarrel with His spouse. She often wanders from Him and grieves His Holy Spirit, but He does not allow her faults to affect His love.

He sometimes rebukes, but it is always in a tender manner, with the kindest of intentions: It is “my love” even then. There is no remembrance of our follies. He does not cherish ill thoughts of us, but He pardons and loves equally after the offense as before it.

If Jesus were as mindful of injuries as we are, how could He commune with us? Too often a believer will put himself out of humor with the Lord for some slight turn in providence, but our precious Husband knows our silly hearts too well to take any offense at our ill manners.

Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon – Consolation in Christ

December 3, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies.” Philippians 2:1

Greg Laurie – The Message of Christmas

December 3, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. —John 3:16

When I was a kid, I always wanted a family but never had one. I remember one Christmas with my mom when we were living in a hotel. I got up on Christmas morning, excited about opening my presents, but she was passed out from a night of drinking. I looked around and thought, It has got to get better than this.

I believed that Christmas spoke of something greater. What Christmas really speaks of is what we can have in a relationship with Jesus Christ. The primary message of Christmas is that God came to us: ” ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’ ” (Matthew 1:23).

The message of Christmas is not “Let it snow”; it is “Let us worship” because God is with us. The first Christmas gifts were not from the wise men to the Child. Rather, the first gift of Christmas was the gift of Jesus Christ from God to us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The message of Christmas means this: You will never be alone in life again. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). That is an amazing statement. God the Father and God the Son are saying they want to make their home with you and me.

Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). That is a promise to all people. Why? Because of Immanuel—God is with us.

Charles Stanley

Charles Stanley – When God’s Spirit Is in Charge

December 2, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

James 1:2-4

A Spirit-filled life does not mean one that is problem-free. Christians who are under the control of the Holy Spirit will still make mistakes, have difficulties, and fall into sin. But there are two definite characteristics that distinguish Spirit-filled followers of Christ from other Christians and from unbelievers.

First, they are not controlled by their circumstances, and second, they refocus quickly after having sinned.

When the Holy Spirit is in charge, our attitude will not be determined by what’s going on around us. In other words, life doesn’t have to be stress-free in order for us to know peace—our spiritual joy won’t diminish even if we should meet with disappointment.

Anyone can be loving, kind, and self-controlled in seasons of blessing. But what happens to our attitude in trying times? The real test of who we are occurs not when things are going our way but when misfortune shows up. If the Spirit is in charge, we will learn to do four things: to love when we want to hate; to practice kindness when we are accused; to respond gently when others are harsh; and to have self-control when temptation strikes hard.

None of us will do all of this perfectly because there is still “self” within us. But when we sin, we will respond quickly to the Spirit’s prompting. He won’t have to work hard to get our attention, because we are under His authority. We will recognize our wrong action, confess it, and refocus on God’s ways.

If you are a Christ-follower, who is in control of your life?

Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg – A Beautiful Bride

December 2, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

You are altogether beautiful, my love.

Song of Songs 4:7

The Lord’s admiration for His Church is very wonderful, and His description of her beauty is very glowing. She is not merely beautiful, but “altogether beautiful.” He views her in Himself, washed in His sin-atoning blood and clothed in His meritorious righteousness, and He considers her to be full of attraction and beauty. No wonder that this is the case, since it is simply His own perfect excellency that He admires; for the holiness, glory, and perfection of His Church are His own glorious garments worn by His well-beloved spouse.

She is not simply pure or well-proportioned; she is positively lovely and fair! She has actual merit! Her deformities of sin are removed; but more, she has through her Lord obtained a meritorious righteousness by which an actual beauty is conferred upon her.

Believers have a positive righteousness given to them when “he chose us in him” (Eph. 1:4). Nor is the church barely lovely-she is superlatively so. Her Lord styles her “most beautiful among women.”1 She has a real worth and excellence that cannot be rivaled by all the nobility and royalty of the world.

If Jesus could exchange His elect bride for all the queens and empresses of earth, or even for the angels in heaven, He would not, for He puts her first and foremost! Like the moon she far outshines the stars. Nor is this an opinion that He is ashamed of, for He invites all men to hear it. He sets a “behold” before it, a special note of exclamation, inviting and arresting attention. “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!” (Song of Sol. 4:1). He publishes His opinion widely even now, and one day from the throne of His glory He will declare the truth of it before the assembled universe. “Come, you who are blessed by my Father” (Matt. 25:34) will be His solemn affirmation of the loveliness of His elect.

1 Song of Solomon 1:8

Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon – Christ our passover

December 2, 2013 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

“For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” 1 Corinthians 5:7

John MacArthur – Jesus: Our Great High Priest

December 2, 2013 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

“The point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Heb. 8:1).

Access to God was always a problem for the Jewish people. Exodus 33:20 declares that no man can see God and live. Once each year, on the great Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the Jewish high priest entered into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence dwelt in a unique sense, to approach God on behalf of the people.

God’s covenant with Israel was the basis for their communion with Him. And the sacrificial system that accompanied the Old Covenant gave the people an outward act to represent their inner repentance. But their sacrifices were incessant because their sin was incessant. They needed a perfect priest and sacrifice to provide access to God permanently. That’s exactly what Jesus was and did.

Hebrews 10 says that Jesus offered His body as a sacrifice for mankind’s sins once for all, then sat down at the right hand of the Father (vv. 10, 12). That was a revolutionary concept to Jewish thinking. A priest on duty could never sit down because his work was never done. But Jesus introduced a new and wonderful element into the sacrificial system: one sacrifice, offered once, sufficient for all time. That was the basis of the New Covenant.

Our Lord’s priesthood is permanent and perpetual: “Because He abides forever, [He] holds His priesthood permanently. Hence, also, He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24-25). That’s the central message of the book of Hebrews.

It wasn’t easy for the Jewish people to accept the need for a new covenant. Most rejected Christ outright. Similarly, many people today reject His priesthood, supposing they can gain access to God on their own terms. But they’re tragically mistaken. Jesus Himself said, “No one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6).

Suggestion for Prayer:

Praise God for receiving you into His presence through His Son, Jesus Christ.

For Further Study:

Read Hebrews 10:19-25, noting how God wants you to respond to Christ’s priesthood.

DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION

Tag Archives: lord jesus christ

Charles Spurgeon – The Exodus

Charles Stanley – The Guidance of the Holy Spirit

Our Daily Bread — Serious Fear

John MacArthur – Christ’s Radiance and Representation

Presidential Prayer Team; P.G. – Prioritized Place

Alistair Begg – The Worst Made the Best

Charles Spurgeon – The Destroyer destroyed

Presidential Prayer Team; C.H. – Perfect Present

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Evidence

John MacArthur – God’s Final Revelation

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Incarnate

John MacArthur – Progressive Revelation

Charles Stanley – The Power Within

Alistair Begg – Free from the Slightest Flaw

Charles Spurgeon – Consolation in Christ

Greg Laurie – The Message of Christmas

Charles Stanley – When God’s Spirit Is in Charge

Alistair Begg – A Beautiful Bride

Charles Spurgeon – Christ our passover

John MacArthur – Jesus: Our Great High Priest

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