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Today is: Site modified: 04/15/08
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If you're a Christian or think you're a Christian, you need to watch this video by Paul David Washer from the 2002 Youth Evangelism Conference in Montgomery, Alabama. It will inspire you or shock you, you'll love it or hate it! | |||||
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From Living Water Newsletter, Issue 30 Everyone Can Be a Winner Several years ago at the Special Olympics, nine young
contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled
at the starting line for the 100-yard dash.
From Living Water Newsletter, Issue 27 Many years ago an old preacher developed a strange habit of studying the Word of God by talking to the authors of the various books. One day he came across Philippians 4:13 and read these words of the Apostle Paul, "I can do all things . . ." He stopped at that point, startled by Paul's strong statement. "Paul," he said, "I am shocked by what I just read; do you really mean you can do all things—this and that and everything?""Yes," Paul replied, "that's exactly what I mean—I can do all things . . ." "Well," interrupted the old preacher, "if you really mean that, then I have to say that you are a very boastful person, maybe even a braggart. And I really thought that you were more humble than . . ." Paul cut in on him, "Wait a minute, you did not allow me to finish my sentence." "Oh, I'm sorry," said the old preacher, "please continue." "I can do all things," said Paul, "through Christ who strengthens me." The old preacher pondered this for a moment, and then said, "Oh, Paul, I truly do apologize. I did not realize there were two of you!"
God breaks
any of His children who are willing to be broken; and
afterwards, they are strong in the broken places.
From Living Water Newsletter, Issue
10 A legend from the Bagdad of long ago tells of a wealthy merchant who sent his servant to the marketplace. The servant returned empty-handed and terribly frightened. He said that on his way to the marketplace he had met Death, and Death made a threatening gesture at him. Borrowing the merchant's fastest horse the frightened servant raced to Samaria to hide, for he was certain death would never find him there. The merchant went to the marketplace to buy what the servant had not, and there he also met Death. He asked him, "Why did you frighten my servant with a threatening gesture?" Death replied, "Sir, I did not threaten him. My gesture was one of surprise when I saw him here in Bagdad, for I have an appointment with him this evening in Samaria." "To everything there is a season, and
a time for every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes
3:1).
Are You Truly Saved? "Beware, I pray you, of presuming that you are saved. If your heart is renewed, if you hate the things that you once loved, and love the things that you once hated; if you have really repented; if there is a thorough change of mind in you; if you are born again, then have you reason to rejoice: but if there is no vital change, no inward godliness; if there is no love of God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then you saying "I am saved" is but your own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver you." (Charles H. Spurgeon)
A Common Cause of Spiritual Failure "One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man or woman whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There has been but one absolutely perfect Man on this earth—the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are surer to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look to Jesus and Jesus only as your Guide." (R. A. Torrey)
The Chief Danger of the Church Today "The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!" (A. B. Simpson)
The Lord's Assurance to the Born-Again "I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, the person whose ears are open to My words — who listens to My message — and believes and trusts in and clings to and relies on Him Who sent Me has (possesses now) eternal life. And he does not come into judgment — does not incur sentence of judgment, will not come under condemnation — but he has already passed over out of death into life." (John 5:24, Amplified Bible)
Being Made Ready Born-again Christians who suffer many things in this world and hold faithful and obedient to God in and through their suffering, will receive far greater eternal rewards than the Christian Materialists and their leaders who acquire for themselves worldly riches and possessions by their Christianized Motivational Psychology. For it is through trials and tribulations that God is developing for Himself an obedient faith-dependent people for those things He has for them to do in the ages to come. Jesus learned obedience and was perfected through and by the things He suffered (Hebrews 2:10, 5:7-9), and the servant is not greater than the Master (John 15:20). If in His humanity it required suffering to teach Jesus obedience and perfect Him in his faith-dependence upon His Father, then how much more it requires the same for us, His servants. Our problem is that rather than seeing the work of God teaching and perfecting us through our sufferings, and holding fast in faith while giving glory to God (Romans 4:20-21), we wallow in self-pity and whine and complain. And far too often we look upon the Christian Materialists and wonder, to ourselves if not out loud, why God is seemingly blessing them more than us. By so doing, we become less fit for that which God has for us to do in the ages to come, and must be either put through increased trials and tribulations (training, if you will), or laid aside from that which God had intended for us in His eternal heaven. The choice is ours. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21) "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22) And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong—[that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency. Amplified Bible]. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 + Amp)
Could You? Could a President who was truly born-again want to change laws to allow a government agency to torture people?
All the World & Heaven Too! "Who would want something where you're miserable, broke and ugly and you have to muddle through until you get to heaven?" (Joyce Meyer, prosperity teacher, quoted in Time magazine article, "Does God Want You to Be Rich?," September 18, 2006 issue) What an insult that statement and worldly attitude is to our Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself promised His disciples righteousness, peace, and joy—a promise that is reiterated throughout the New Testament. The horror of the prattle of Christian Materialists is that it teaches professing Christians to rely on Christianized Motivational Psychology rather than on the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ, and turns them from laying up treasures in heaven to laying up treasures on earth. By so doing, it also turns their hearts away from heavenly things to worldly things. (See Matthew 6:19-21, 11:28-30; Luke 17:20, Romans 14:17; John 14:29, 16:33, 17:13; Galatians 5:22)
Modern Preaching(?) "If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified." (Leonard Ravenhill)
Praise the Lord for Everything Every day a woman stood on her front porch and shouted, "Praise the Lord!" And every day the atheist next door shouted back, "There is no Lord!" One day as she stood on her porch she prayed out loud, "Lord Jesus, I've run out of food. Please send me some groceries." The next morning, she found two big bags of food on her porch. She shouted in joy, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" Her atheist neighbor jumped out of bushes near the porch and shouted, "I told you there was no Lord! I bought those groceries!" The woman shouted all the more. "Thank you, Lord Jesus! You not only sent me groceries, you made the devil pay for them!"
Walking by Faith Walking by faith is like living in a miracle on the edge of disaster.
Was Jesus Just a Good Man? I am here trying 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 a man who says he is a poached egg—or
else he would be the Devil of Hell.
Faith in God The purest faith in God is a naked faith that has nothing perceptible to stand upon; that is kept constantly in the air, without being allowed to touch a foot to solid ground; that penetrates to the death every tentacle of self-love that desires sensible delights from God as proof of God's presence or pleasure.
The Doctrine of Pure Love The doctrine of pure love [of God] has been known and recognized as a true doctrine among the truly contemplative and devout in all ages of the Church. The doctrine, however, has been so far above the common experience that the pastors and saints of all ages [who have known the truth and experience of the doctrine] have exercised discretion and care in making it known, except to those to whom God had already given both the attraction and light to receive it. Acting on the principle of giving milk to infants and strong meat to those that were more advanced, they addressed in the great body of Christians only the motives of fear and of hope, founded on the consideration of personal happiness or misery. It seemed to them that the motive of God's glory, which is a motive that requires us to love God for Himself alone without a distinct regard and reference to our own happiness, could, as a general rule, only be profitably addressed to those who are somewhat advanced in inward experience. (The Best of Fenelon, Maxims of the Saints, Article Forty-Four)
Meditations from the Spiritual Letters of FénelonWe pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." But how shall we ever see God's will done on earth if we do not first see it done in us? What did Fénelon mean when he wrote, "The life of faith is the most penetrating of all deaths"? There are many who desire to live to God but are unwilling to die to self. Truly humble Christians do not consider themselves little or lowly, they do not consider themselves at all. Imperfection is intolerable of imperfection. |
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New A. B.
Simpson sermon added - click here
to read or download PDF PDFs added for
The Glory and
The Convicting Power of
the Holy Spirit
How to Be Filled with Spiritual Power -
Based on the Miracle Ministry of John G. Lake What is the "Deeper Life"? The Deeper Life is the inward
journey of the soul toward God—"pressing toward the goal
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ
Jesus." It is the journey of the Tabernacle in the
Wilderness—through the blood of the altar of sacrifice, through the
laver: the washing of the water of the Word, and on into the Holy
Place where dwell Christ and the Holy Spirit—then pressing forward
through the now-torn veil into the Most Holy Place and the very
presence of God Himself. A leading deeper life publisher has said that the
Deeper Life is: VICTORIOUS, HOLY, FAITH-CENTERED, SPIRIT-EMPOWERED,
CHRIST-DEPENDENT, SURRENDERED, FRUIT-BEARING, BROKEN, OVERCOMING,
SUSTAINED.
Whatcha Gonna Do When I have often wondered how mega-church
preachers and televangelists who preach Christianized
Motivational Psychology instead of the Scriptures can know that
those to whom they preach are truly going to heaven.
God's warning spoken through Jeremiah to His people may
apply even more today. An astonishing and horrible thing
What Is a Christian? Essentially, a Christian is someone who cannot be explained except in terms of Jesus Christ—someone who can only be explained by the fact that Christ is living His life in and through them
What makes you a Christian is that you are born again, you have received the divine nature—the life of God that Jesus came to bring (John 10:10), Christ now lives in you by the Holy Spirit. Nothing else can make you a Christian. "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (1 John 5:11-12)
When Christ Takes Over In every born-again Christian there is a tipping point at which the Christ-life in the person becomes stronger than the self-life, and begins to control the person and press him or her increasingly, irresistibly, and irreversibly into sanctification—that is, separation from the world's ways, attitudes, and values. (See Galatians 2:20, 2 Corinthians 13:5 (Amplified Bible), Philippians 1:6, 2:13)
Is This Too Hard a Saying? Leonard Ravenhill, the English evangelist and author, once said, "I doubt that more than two percent of professing Christians in the United States are truly born again." (John 3:1-5) If he was right, that would explain the vast majority of spiritual and moral aberrations in today's so-called Christian denominations, churches, and ministries. It would also explain the desire for worldly positions and possessions by the Christian Materialists, even though the Bible clearly says, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." (James 4:4), and Jesus said to the the Pharisees, "who were lovers of money," "You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13-14) The Christian Materialists may think they can and do, but Jesus said, "You cannot." We serve God only when God accepts our service, and Jesus says, in effect, that God does not accept the service of those who love money and the worldly possessions that money can buy. For they show by that, that they love the world, and the world is an enemy of God. Choice your side carefully — your eternal life depends on it!
Whatever You Ask, IF . . . IF you belong to Christ, God will hear your petition, and give you whatever you ask of Him . . . IF what you ask of Him is His will for you.
A Prayer that Should Precede All Prayers"May the You to Whom I pray be the true You, and may the I who prays to You be the true me."
What Is . . .?What is Christ to the heart of God? Whatever He is, He should be the same to our heart. What is God to the heart of Christ? Whatever He is, He should be the same to our heart. May the Holy Spirit truly reveal both to us.
The Reason for the Church"The Church exists for nothing else but to draw people into Christ, to make them little Christs. If the Church is not doing that, all the buildings, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (C. S. Lewis)
The Apostle Paul & Jesus ChristAll of the apostle Paul's theology and teachings sprang out of Jesus Christ, and all of his theology and teachings centered in Jesus Christ. Most of organized Christianity, however, has taken the writings of the inspired apostle and developed thousands of theologies and doctrines that divert Christians away from the simplicity and exclusiveness of Jesus Christ and into many things. But it was not so with Paul. With all his sometimes difficult to understand writings about the person, divinity, purpose, and accomplishments of Jesus Christ, Paul never diverted from Him into other things. Instead, toward the end of his life he focused all of himself personally into one intellectual, emotional, and spiritual endeavor: "to know Him and the power of His resurrection" (Philippians 3:10a).
Love Not the WorldIt's astounding and fearful that so many Christians today accept as Bible doctrine the Christianized motivational psychology that is peddled by greedy self-proclaiming television preachers and parroted from thousands of church pulpits by pastors and ministers who want to emulate them. Where in God's holy name are the truly sanctified men and women of God who preach nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified - those God-separated men and women who speak not in word's that human wisdom teaches, but in words that the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things? And where are the spiritual Christians who want to hear them and abide by the spiritual teachings of the Holy Spirit? May God in His infinite grace and mercy bring them together!
Bring All Things Into the LightIn John 3:19-21, Jesus said, in essence, to bring all things into the light that it may be seen that they are of God. Which means that everything in our lives - whether business, ministry, or personal - should be of such a nature that it could be openly revealed to all who wish to see it, and that in seeing they would see that the thing revealed was of God! The Lord indicated, also, that the only reason why someone would not bring something into the light was because that thing was of darkness and not of God. Paul said the same things in a slightly different way in Ephesians 5 where he wrote to the born-again Christians, "you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light."
Who Is Your Supplier?God will supply all your need (Exodus 16:16a, Philippians 4:19); but when you get past need into greed, it is no longer God supplying it.
Christians are Born, Not MadeYou cannot make a person a Christian through teaching or training−God's children are born into the kingdom of His son, not tutored into it. Becoming a child of God is a spiritual birth experience, not an intellectual process. It is an experience that is performed by and subsequently witnessed to by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 4; Romans 8:9, 16)
Prayers & CoincidencesI started preaching and teaching a few years after I became a Christian. One Sunday after I taught on prayer, an older - in years in the Lord - and more knowledgeable Christian told me that prayers changed us but that God did not intervene in our lives because we prayed, and that all the things I talked about as being answers to my prayers were only coincidences. Well, that being so, and it must be so since this Christian who was older in the Lord and more knowledgeable had told me so, I stopped praying as much as I did. And when I did, I discovered this strange thing: the coincidences that had been happening so regularly in my life virtually stopped. Being of a curious nature, I went back to praying the way I used to, and this strange thing occurred: all those coincidences started happening again. Well, I did not like going against that knowledgeable Christian and saying that he was wrong, but after meditating on it for some time I realized that for a Christian there are no such things as coincidences, there are only God-incidences. And those God-incidences happen most frequently when we spend time talking things over with God - what most folks call prayer.
Be CarefulSometimes the severest penalty God can inflict upon His children when they reject what they need is to give them what they want. In the Old Testament they demanded a physical king so they could be like other nations and He gave them Saul. In recent times a certain segment of Christianity has demanded visible signs and wonders that they can see and He has given them ----- ----.
The Purpose-Driven LifeRegardless of the phenomenal popularity of the book of the same title, born-again Christians need not a purpose-driven life but a Christ-driven life, not self-esteem but Christ-esteem, not self-confidence but Christ-confidence, and not self-righteousness but Christ's righteousness − that righteousness which is from God by faith!
Romans 5:10We were reconciled (forgiven of our sins and made right with God) through the death of Christ, and we shall be saved (separated increasingly unto God through a process of continual and increasing sanctification) by His life. We need His death because of what we did; we need His life because of what we are.
Notes from a Study on ChristGod has given us nothing outside of Christ. Christ is our life - action based upon knowledge is activated by memory, life acts spontaneously. True obedience to God comes not from what we know but from what we are. The purpose and intent of God shown from the beginning to the end of the Bible is resurrection and eternal life, and Jesus said He is both. Thus all of God's purpose and intent is consummated in Christ. The Church consists of all those who have died to themselves and been born again by the resurrected life of Christ. We cannot have more of Christ until we have less of ourselves - self must die fully before Christ can live fully in us. Thus the death and life of Christ must constantly work in us. All who truly find Christ will converge into one point, where Christ is the sum of all things in a vital, living, active experience and faith. All who find only doctrines about Christ will diverge into many points and have only dead experiences and dead faith. |
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