Obsessed

            Obsessed with the forgiveness of God.

Tough questions

            What is wrong with asking God tough questions?  Is He not God?

Exhortation

Mrs. Maria Woodworth- Etter exhorted strongly and earnestly to the large assembly.  “Open your hearts to God, and He will open heaven to you!”  People, it was said, received the Holy Ghost and fire!

In Marriage

            Rick Joyner of Moring Star Ministries councils, “In marriage, I have learned there are those who admit they have been through times when they wondered if their marriage would make it and then there are liars.  Relationships are hard, and the closer they are, the harder they can be.  I tell everyone that I give premarital counseling to that the Lord has ordained their marriage in order to kill both of them!  That is true.  It is also worth it!  The greatest gift He gave to man was marriage and family.  However, to have a marriage that is good, both will have to die to themselves.  If either one does not make the commitment to lay down their life for their mate and their family, then what was meant to be heaven can be hell.”  This is most certainly true.

Word of the Gospel

            After the Word of the Gospel has been preached and the voice of rejoicing has sounded forth, there follows the discernment of spirits and the distribution of the gifts of the Spirit of which 1 Corinthians 12:4 speaks. ~~ Luther’s Works, AE, Vol. 16, p. 130 

Comedy

            Comedy legend Carol Burnett at various times closed her show with, “Love doesn’t make the world go ‘round.  It makes the ride worthwhile.”

Blaise Pascal

            The French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal considered one of the great minds in Western intellectual history, said that it is presumptuous for an author to call his words “mine,” since there is usually in those words much more of other people’s thoughts than the author’s own.  

Come

            When you come back to God for pardon and salvation, come with your body, to offer it as a living sacrifice upon His altar.  Come with your soul and all its powers, and yield them in willing consecration to your God and Saviour.  Come, bring them all along – everything, body, soul, intellect, imagination acquirement – all, without reserve. ~~ Charles Finney (1792 – 1875)

Women

            Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love. ~~ William Shakespeare 

Not my Enemy

            I would like to share a story from the deep recess of my memory.  Years ago, I was watching the 700 Club and that evening Host Ben Kinchlow was interviewing a veteran who had fought in the “Korean Police Action,” which was never formally declared as a war.  The main theme of the interview was that God is always with you no matter the circumstances.  The story went something like this:

            In 1951 while serving south of Wonsan, a young infantry sergeant’s life changed forever.  The Allies won, lost, and won again rugged hills of North Korea.  This sergeant did “recon” in an area that earlier that day had been lost to the North Korean forces.

            On his way back to the Allied lines, he crawled through a ravine where his unit, only hours before, had met with the enemy.  Hearing a noise, then a cough, he looked in the direction from where the sounds were coming from and saw an enemy soldier slumped over on the ground.  This seasoned non-com knew the soldier could be a human booby trap, yet something spoke to his spirit to crawl to him who by this time had raised a small cross in the air.

            Though they could not communicate with words, he raised the soldier up to a sitting position and made him as comfortable as he could.  It was then that he noticed he had a life-threatening wound.  He knew the only way this person could make it was if he received a miracle.  He applied a gauze pack to the area while the soldier reached to his coat and brought out a small case containing pictures of his wife and child.  He managed a smile.  The American soldier tried to comfort the soldier by talking to him and looking at his pictures.  Soon the time came for him to leave (for his commander would be expecting him) but not before this American soldier prayed healing for his North Korean acquaintance and that God would bless his wife and child.

            The next day based on his “recon” information, believing that the North Koreans had pulled back, the Allies advanced again.  He purposely went back to the ravine to see if his Christian friend had managed to get back to his lines.  He hadn’t, he was in the exact spot he had left him, with peace about him.  He never told anyone of this encounter until years later.  Not my Enemy.

Hurry, hurry

Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. ~~ John Randolph

Rational

This is where our rational comes into play.  Right away, we want to reason that somehow we did something here that makes the cost less costly.  Listen in your spirit the small voice that says, “Yes, but...”  Observe, my friend, what little decrement you have

Unutterably hard

               The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it.  But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy, and the burden is light. ~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Overpaid

                Today there no one I know that feels he or she is overpaid!  In fact, most feel they are underpaid and deserve a raise.  The reasoning for this is many.  A few months ago, I heard a sermon on WMBI radio, the speaker declared, “Now look around the room. God overpaid for what He got.”

         

Discipline of Confession Stressed

CAROL STREM, IL. – The March issue of Christianity Today’s “Kyria” resource for women (www.Kyria.com) emphasized the spiritual discipline of confession – the practice of acknowledging our brokenness to God and others so that we can be restored to the fullness of redemption and life.  Such honest public sharing and confession of sin is a growing trend crossing many church traditions. ~~ Christian NewsWire, 3/1/10 

Death

Death and aging are traveling companions as I make the journey to my Father’s house. ~~ C. G. Chellgreen 

Overcome by

I was siege by the power of great affection. ~~ Brennan Manning

Change

Change
            Conversion does not mean a change of outward appearance; rather it requires a change of mind and results in a transformed life. ~~ Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg (1683-1719), Missionary to India

Revelation of the Cross

            The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin.  Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ.  The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken.  There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God.  He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God. ~~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Dreadful

The hilarious words of Soren Kierkegaard resonate true...  When have we stopped living Christianity and just started studying it?  Here's what he said:
            "The matter is quite simple.  The Bible is very easy to understand.  But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.  We pretend to be enable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.  Take my words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself accordingly.  My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined.  How would I ever get on in the world?  Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.  Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.  Oh, priceless scholarship what would we do without you?  Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.  Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

A fanatic

            A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. ~~ Winston Churchill

God the Holy Spirit

            God the Holy Spirit wants us to know the reality of this fullness of the Spirit so that we will neither be ignorant nor have mystic conceptions but will have a clear, unmistakable revelation of the entire mind of God for these days. ~~ Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947)

Repentance

        Do you consider yourself a Christian?  Better yet, do you consider yourself a follower of God?  Maybe I should ask you does God consider you as one of His followers.  No one but you can give a truthful answer to that question.  No one but you can allow your soul to be contaminated with peccadillo.  No outside force has the power to separate you from God.  Any rehearsed sin will cause God to step back and give you the freedom to do as you please.  These disturbing practices will cause God to leave you if there is no repentance.  Repentance avails us forgiveness, grace and mercy.  In ‘real time’, repentance removes the boulders, cleans the airways, restores and renews your intimacy with the Lord.  If you so desire, nothing “will be able to separate you from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence a 17^th-century cook, dishwasher and sandal maker wrote, “Ground yourself in God’s presence by continually conversing with him.  Nourish your soul by focusing your mind on God’s glory.  Accept the joy that comes from spending time with him.  Renew your faith; it’s terrible that we have so little.”

Sign

      Joy is the surest sign of God’s presents.

Lord, Liar or Lunatic

            As C. S. Lewis expresses it so well in Mere Christianity: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the devil of hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and god.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to. 

In the depth

            The journey of entering into a deeper level of experience with Jesus the Christ is within your grasp.

            Madame Jeanne Guyon writes in her book, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, “In the beginning, you were led into His presence by prayer; but now, as prayer continues, the prayer actually becomes His presence.  In fact, we can no longer say that it is prayer that continues.  It is actually His presence that continues with you.  This is beyond prayer.  Now a heavenly blessedness is yours.  You begin to discover that God is more intimately present to you than you are to yourself, and a great awareness of the Lord begins to come to you.”

            His presence is as close to you as your skin is to your body.  It is here, and here alone, you can find Him.  

            

Religious life

Religious life is change...

            this much we know for we are being transformed into something more precious than gold!

Original thinking

     I haven’t had an original thought in my life. ~~ Bill Hybels senior pastor of the Willow Creek Community Church

The elect

     Since the Holy Spirit dwells in the elect who have come to faith as he dwells in his temple, and is not idle in them but urges them to obey the commandments of God, believers likewise should not be idle, still less oppose the urgings of the Spirit of God, but should exercise themselves in all Christian virtues, in all godliness, modesty, temperance, patience and brotherly love, and should diligently seek to ‘confirm their call and election’ so that the more they experience the power and might of the Spirit within themselves, the less they will doubt their election. ~~ Book of Concord, FC SD XI, 73

Loneliness

     It is among the wealthy that we can find the most terrible poverty of all – loneliness. ~~ Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

Revelation of the Cross

            The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin.  Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ.  The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken.  There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God.  He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God. ~~ Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest

Agree

     If you and I agree all the time, one of us becomes unnecessary. ~~ Ruth Graham