The Time to Pray is Before the Shooting Starts

Greetings All,

     Today's "thought" comes from the Blog of Melissa Edgington entitled: yourmomhasablog.com  In light of a month that has seen so many needless shooting deaths and injuries, this post caught my attention. I know I sent out a thought on prayer last week, but I would like to follow it up this week with another -- dealing with the rush to pray (or at least promises to pray) AFTER heartbreaking situations occur.  I read Melissa's post and felt it was worth sharing.  I trust you will find it true and challenging. Enjoy.

The Time to Pray is Before the Shooting Starts

  I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among Christians. We are not a praying people.  Oh, we love the idea of prayer.  We love sharing memes about it and ranting on social media about prayer in schools. We love organizing prayer vigils after some awful tragedy has struck.  We follow the same predictable patterns of making prayer a low priority until we have absolutely no other recourse but to turn to the God of the Universe.

     As His children, we must start examining what it is that keeps us from prayer. Is it that we really don’t believe that God is in control? Or do we just not care what He does until He does something that negatively affects us? Do we really think that the best time to pray is after the mass shooting?

     At most prayer meetings, only a fraction of the church takes time to attend. It isn’t a time issue. Parents and grandparents alike can make it to every little league game, anytime, anywhere, with three or four kids in tow. In most cases it isn’t a matter of limited mobility or poor health. The majority of us are perfectly able to meet together to pray. We just don’t want to.

     Imagine how our communities and churches and schools might change if we approached the throne of God with an expectation that He will hear our prayers. With an excitement about what He will do with the pleas of His people.  Consider how things might be different if we had eyes to see how He uses our prayers to accomplish His will, if we had the faith to believe that prayer really matters.

     Imagine if we weren’t afraid to humble ourselves before our God, before our family and friends and fellow believers, if we marked prayer meetings on our calendars in ink, making it clear to our children that we make prayer with fellow believers a priority in our homes. Instead, most of us hear the words “prayer meeting” and tune out. Not for us. Not important. Not worth our time.

     We spend so much time worrying about the world our kids and grand-kids are growing up in, so many hours scheming and planning ways to shelter them, and so little time talking to the One who can actually change things. If you want to know the truth, it isn’t the youth of today or the evil governments or the wicked schemes of man that make me fear for the future. It’s the empty prayer meetings.

     “The Cinderella of the Church today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy, neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel.” – Leonard Ravenhill

     After learning of the latest statistics on how few Christians there are that regularly share the gospel, or spend any significant time in prayer, a friend of mine once said (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course, regarding what motivates people): "The only mistake God made was that he didn't offer to give us five dollars for every person we share the Gospel with, or contract to pay us an hourly wage for time spent praying. Or better still, that He didn't make our salvation dependent on doing both."   I do often wonder how many more people would do those two things if they were financially reimbursed for the time and efforts. 

     Those are some pretty encouraging promises to be given from the One who has all power in heaven and earth!  Yet, given the commitment to prayer on the part of many Christians, you would never know Jesus had spoken such words!  Yet He did, not only because He intends to make good on them, but also to encourage and move us to pray.  One must ask: What will it take to get us to do so?  Could the carnage be stopped if God's people would flood the throne of grace with petitions for His intervention to prevent them, instead of prayers of comfort for those who have lost loved ones after the fact?  Because I believe Melissa is spot-on - The Time to Pray is Before the Shooting Starts.

     "Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, FOR THIS IS GOD'S WILL FOR YOU in Christ Jesus." (I Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Pastor Jeff

How to Walk With God.

Greetings All,

Today's thought comes from the first chapter of a book I read as I was starting out in the ministry.  It was 1987 and the book was written by a man who was having a ministry of great impact at that time in New England -- Everett L. Fullam.  The book is entitled, "How to Walk With God."    Yet, before Fullam tells us how to walk with God (by faith, of course), he points out one necessary detail many overlook in terms of the Being we hope to walk with by faith.  Enjoy.

     "The most distinguishing characteristic of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob -- the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ -- is His holiness. It's not His great power. It's not His infinite wisdom or knowledge. It's His holy character, with no dark spots, no shadows, but rather light through and through. His holiness means a consistency of purpose that is never deflected and a constancy of devotion in continual and eternal covenant.  If we are going to be among those who seek the Lord, we must concern ourselves with His holiness -- and concentrate on responding with a personal holiness that conforms to the will and purpose of God (Hebrews 12:14 / I Peter 1:16). 

     Holiness is not a popular idea today. There is a form of Christianity that is devoid of holiness, an eloquent testimony that its god is not the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, nor is it the Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. People fashion gods after their own images and relate to those gods (those idols) on their own terms, because their gods are products of their own self-creation. In the early chapters of his prophecy, Isaiah recorded a marvelous vision of God seated high and lifted up on a throne. Isaiah wrote that God's train filled the temple, and that the pillars of the temple trembled at the presence of God.  He saw the place was filled with smoke and seraphs and angels flew about, singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts" (Isaiah 6:3).  In perceiving this God, the first words that came from his mouth were, "Woe is me, for I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."  He had been dealing with the real God, and said: "For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah 6:5).

     The only time we can deal with God and not be impressed by the depths of our need is when we fashion a god after our own liking and worship that god. We can deal with that god and remain the same, but if we come into the presence of the living God, we are struck with our own need. If we are unwilling to deal with the things in our lives that are contrary to the purpose of God, then we are not dealing with the holy God. We are dealing with an idol of our own imagining...  Whatever concerns us ultimately, whatever is the controlling dynamic of our life, is our god. For some people it is family, for others its careers, or getting ahead, or reaching the top. Whatever is dominant in our life is our god; and if it is anything other than the Lord God Himself, that's idolatry.  Before we can walk with Him we need to deal with those things. He wants His people to allow Him to be supreme, and so He told Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father's house. He told him to throw away the gods of his forefathers so he could start afresh, so he could learn to serve Him in singular faithfulness...

     God is a God of mercy -- He is a God of the second chance, and the third chance, and the fourth chance, and fifth and sixth and so on. When we come to Him -- even though we've been walking in the wrong direction,  even though we've stopped for a time and have not been moving at all -- if we recognize that we've been disobedient, and confess and deal with our sin by repentance, we can start over again right away.  God's forgiveness cleanses, and the grace of God again begins to flow toward us, and in us, as the joy of our salvation is restored."

     In our day it must be asked if we seek to walk with God as He really is.  That is, if we seek to walk with the God who is revealed in the Bible as being Holy above all else -- Holy, Holy Holy.  Unspeakably Holy and unalterably opposed to sin.  A God who as Fullam points out, calls us to be holy as He is holy (I Peter 1:16).  In many ways this calls us to divest ourselves of some of the common misrepresentations we have about Him in our minds. It means we must be willing to rid ourselves of the images of Him that we've created (or adopted over time) that make us feel more comfortable in dealing with Him.

     In 1987 when Fullam wrote the book, he could say, "Holiness is not a popular idea today."  I would say that is even more the case today.  Yet if we are to walk with God we must not ignore His primary attribute.  For we are told He is, "the Holy One of Israel."   We are told to "glory in His Holy name" (I Chron. 16:10).  Scripture tells us, "our God is Holy," and "His ways are Holy" (Ps. 77:13 / Ps. 99:9).  No other attribute of God is ever repeated three times in rapid succession. God is never said to be, "Love, Love Love," or"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy."  But He is said on three occasions to be, "Holy, Holy, Holy."  And therefore, if we desire to walk with Him, we must seek to grasp -- maybe above all else -- exactly what that means. For if we do not envision a God who is holy, we are not envisioning the God who is.

May we learn to walk with Him in holiness and reverence, Pastor Jeff 

The Practice of the Presence of God

Greetings!

This past weekend the men at my church got away on a "Men's Recon"  to a couple cabins in the Pocono Mountains to spend time in quiet contemplation with God.  In doing so we read Brother Lawrence's classic work, "The Practice of the Presence of God."  It was revitalizing time.   I had my own copy of the book which I bought many years ago, so I brought it with me - fragile as it is from being loaned out and read so many times. Over the years I have copied quotes into the many blank pages and spaces in it.  So today I wanted to share some of those quotes with you.  And if you have just a moment, let me know which one(s) hit home the most. Enjoy.

"Whatever we are doing, even if we are reading the Word or praying, we should stop for a few minutes -- as often as possible -- to praise God from the depths of our hearts, to enjoy Him there in secret. Since you believe that God is always with you no matter what you may be doing, why shouldn't you stop for a while to adore Him, to praise Him, to petition Him, to offer Him your heart, and to thank Him?"

Brother Lawrence

"There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it. We breathe it. We live by it and we die in it."

Robert Louis Stevenson

"You have no strength but what God gives you, and you can have all the strength that God can give." 

Andrew Murray

"Wonder is the basis of worship."

Thomas Carlyle

"Faith is not an effort, a striving, a ceaseless seeking, as so many earnest souls suppose, but rather, a letting go, an abandonment, an abiding rest in God that nothing, not even the soul's shortcomings can disturb." 

Unknown

"God never asks us to give up anything unless He intends to replace it with something better."

George Mueller

"He who would not die for Jesus will never truly live for Jesus; for to earnestly live for Him requires dying daily to the self-will that we may do His will."

"God insists that we ask, not because He needs to know our situation, but because we need the spiritual discipline of asking."

Catherine Marshall

"When God wants to do His great works, He trains somebody to be quiet enough and little enough, then uses that person."

Hudson Taylor

"Enter into the inner chamber of your mind, shut out all things except God and whatever might aid you in seeking God, and having barred the door of your inner chamber, seek Him." 

St. Anselm of Canterbury

"God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him." 

Martin Luther

"Joy is not happiness as much as it is gladness; it is the ecstasy of eternity in a soul that has made peace with God and is ready to do His will."

Unknown

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation."

Elton Trueblood

"Be patient with each other, there are no shortcuts to spirituality. The growing of fruit takes time."

Unknown

"The greatness of a man is not measured by his power or ability, but by the measure of his surrender to God."

Unknown

"The person who insists on seeing with perfect clarity before he follows Christ in the way, will never obey God's call to walk by faith. To Abraham God said, 'Leave your country and your people and your father's household, and go to the place I will (that is, in the future, far down the road) show you." 

"When, as a husband or wife, you are confronted with a very difficult choice, do what is best for your spouse and your children and God will honor it." 

"If you'd ever really gotten inside the mind of Jesus, ever had a single taste of His burning love, considerations of your own loss or gain would mean nothing."

Thomas A'Kempis

"It is possible to give without loving, but it is impossible to love without giving."

Richard Braumstein

"Though we do not have our Lord Jesus with us in bodily presence, we have our neighbor, who, for the ends of love and loving service, is as good as our Lord Himself."

Teresa of Avila

"To do so no more is the best repentance."

Martin Luther

"No one gives himself freely and willingly to God's service unless, having tasted His Fatherly love, he is drawn to love and worship Him in return." 

John Calvin

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

For Each Day A Prayer

Greetings All,

     This week's "thought" will surely qualify as the shortest one I've ever sent out! 
     It's a prayer by Blaise Pascal, the famous and brilliant French physicist and defender of the Christian faith. He is more well-known for his book, "Pensees" (meaning, "Thoughts") where with great wisdom, insight, reflection and logic he addresses and answers objections to the Christian faith. It has helped many a skeptic on their journey to faith in Jesus. This thought, however, is simply one little prayer he prayed.  A prayer packed with so much faith and profound spiritual insight (even though very short) that I thought it deserved to stand on its own.

     It is found in a book I received in the mail yesterday from Honduras, as a gift from my good friend Edith Peters. (Thank you Edith!)  The title is, "For Each Day A Prayer."  The author (the collector and arranger of the prayers found in it) is Elisabeth Hamill Davis.  It was published in 1905.
     She does not say where she found this prayer, but I offer it to you for your consideration -- requesting only that you might read it, and then honestly and earnestly ask yourself if you could sincerely pray it as your own, stating the truth he states, and requesting those things he asks for.  Enjoy.

     "The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away, blessed be the name of the LORD."

Job 1:21

"O Lord, let me not from this day forward desire health or life, 

       except to spend them for You, with You, and in You.

  You alone know what is good for me; 

       do, therefore, whatever seems best to You.

Give to me, or take from me. 

Conform my will to Yours.

Grant that with humble and perfect submission, 

and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders 

of Your eternal Providence; and may equally adore 

all that comes from You; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen."

In His Service, Pastor Jeff 

God Has United You to Himself

Greetings All!

     Today's "thought"  comes to you from one of the first authors I ever read after being converted - Andrew Murray.   In 1980 I was in Marion, Indiana, training to go to the Dominican Republic to work with teens through 'New Horizons Youth Ministries.'  I had just come to Christ months earlier and had no books to help me grow in the faith once I arrived there.  And since my "salary" was a dollar a day (and that's not an  exaggeration!), I had very little cash.  Therefore, I did the only thing I could - I prayed for $50.00 that I might be able to purchase some books to take with me to help me grow.  Three days later a check came in the mail for $55.00(!), which I then took and spent on books -- and all but one was by Andrew Murray.  ("Absolute Surrender," "Like Christ," "Abide in Christ," "With Andrew Murray in the School of Prayer," "Waiting on God," and "Humility."  I still have each one!  The other was, "Love Life of the Lord" by A. B. Simpson.)

     










     Today's excerpt comes from an updated version of "Abide in Christ" published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and entitled, "Abiding in Christ."  This selection is the entry for Day 6: "God Has United You to Himself." I trust it will instruct and enrich your soul. Enjoy!

     "'You are in Christ Jesus.' The believers at Corinth were still weak and carnal, only babes in Christ. And yet Paul wanted them, at the outset of his teaching, to know distinctly that they were in Christ Jesus. The whole Christian life depends on the clear consciousness of our position in Christ.  Most essential to abiding in Christ is the daily renewal of our faith's assurance, "I am in Christ Jesus." All fruitful preaching to believers must begin with: "You are in Christ Jesus." 

     But the apostle has an additional thought of almost greater importance: It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus" (I Cor. 1:30).  Paul would have us not only remember our union with Christ, but also - and more particularly - that it is not of our own doing, but the work of God Himself.  As the Holy Spirit teaches us to realize this we will see what a source of assurance and strength this is to us. If it is of God alone that I am in Christ, then God Himself, the infinite One, becomes my security for all I need or desire in seeking to abide in Christ. 

     Let me try to explain what this means...  So often, when the believer tries to say, "I am in Christ Jesus," he looks more to the work he has done than to that wondrous secret work of God which united him to Christ. This is to be expected at the beginning of the Christian course.  "I know that I have believed," is a valid testimony.  But it is important that the mind be led to see that at the back of our turning, believing, and receiving Christ, God's almighty power was doing its work of inspiring our will, taking possession of us [raising us from our death in trespasses and sins -- Ephesians 2:1, 2:5, and Colossians 2:13] and carrying out its own purpose of love in planting us into Christ Jesus.

     As the believer understands the the divine side of the work of salvation, he will learn to praise and worship with new enthusiasm and to rejoice more than ever in his salvation. At each step he reviews, the song will come: "This is the Lord's doing."  It is Divine Omnipotence working out what Eternal Love devised. "It is because of God that I am in Christ Jesus." The words will lead him even further and higher, and to the very depths of eternity: "And those he predestined he also called" (Romans 8:30).  One's calling in time is the manifestation of God's purpose in eternity.  For before the world came into existence, God had his sovereign love fixed on you in the election of grace and had chosen you in Christ.

     That you know you are in Christ is the key to understanding the full meaning of this word: "Because of God I am in Christ Jesus."  With the prophet your language will be, "The Lord has appeared to us in the past, saying: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with loving-kindness'" (Jeremiah 31:3). You will see your own salvation as a part of that "mystery of His will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ (Ephesians 1:9), and you will join with the whole church as they say, "In him we were chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will" (Ephesians 1:11).  Nothing will exalt free grace more, and make man bow very low before it, than this knowledge of the mystery of God's will: "It is because of God that we are in Christ Jesus."

     Given the fickle nature of humanity, plagued as it is by sin, it is so comforting and soul-strengthening to know, "It is because of God that I am in Christ Jesus."   It humbles, melts the heart, and brings joy unspeakable to the believer's soul to think that his or her salvation is the outworking in time of God's good pleasure and purpose for them from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4-5).

     One of my favorite hymns - “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” - expresses so well our indebtedness to God for this grace. An indebtedness that isn't simply for his grace in joining us to Christ initially, as Murray speaks of above, but for holding us in it's grip when our hearts have wanted to wander, stray, and go their own way -- even after receiving such free and unmerited grace.

     "Oh, to grace how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be

      Let that goodness like a fetter (like a shackle around my ankle), Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

      Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

      Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above."

     If it were up to me, and me alone, I know all too well where I would be.  Right where I was when in time He called me - dead in my trespasses and sins.  Murray is right: "As the Holy Spirit teaches us to realize this we will see what a source of assurance and strength this is to us. If it is of God alone that I am in Christ, then God Himself, the infinite One, becomes my security for all I need or desire in seeking to abide in Christ...  As the believer understands the the divine side of the work of salvation, he will learn to praise and worship with new enthusiasm and to rejoice more than ever in his salvation. At each step he reviews, the song will come: "This is the Lord's doing." It is Divine Omnipotence working out what Eternal Love devised."

In the Service of His Grace, Pastor Jeff

Brokenness

Greetings All!

     Just this week a good brother blessed me with a copy of a classic Christian book on revival that I did not have. Yet even better than receiving the book was the content within it. Only two chapters into it I found myself nodding and agreeing (from Scripture and experience) with much of what he was saying.

     The author is Roy Hession (1908-1992) and the book's title is "The Calvary Road."   Hession had been doing full-time evangelistic work in Great Britain for years, but in 1947 (by his own admission) he had fallen into a state of deep spiritual need, somehow having lost the power of the Holy Spirit that he had once known in the Lord's work.  It brought him to lament, "I still had to conduct evangelistic campaigns, but without His power -- a terrible experience."  As a pastor, I have known such periods too.  And yes, it is a terrible experience!
     Realizing he lacked spiritual power, he simply worked harder and increased his efforts, which made him increasingly tense and forceful - "a poor substitute,"he says, "for the Spirit's gentle penetrating power."  Yet, during this season of spiritual dryness, he invited some missionaries from the East African Revival Movement to speak at an Easter conference he had organized. And from that week on, everything changed. Their strong emphasis on a personal implementation of the basics of the Christian faith, and in particular, the healing powers of openness, transparency, and repentance made a profound impact on his life.  And as Hession wrote in the preface to the 1973 edition, "This little book expresses the truths that lie at the heart of revival, simply because it is the product of revival."  Enjoy.

BROKENNESS

     "We want to be very simple in this matter of Revival. Revival is just the life of the Lord Jesus poured into human hearts... Whatever may be our experience of failure and barrenness, He is never defeated. His power is boundless. And we, on our part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him, and we shall see His power being demonstrated in our hearts and lives and service, and victorious life will fill us and overflow through us to others. And that is Revival in its essence.

     If, however, we are to come into this right relationship with Him, the first thing we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. To be broken is the beginning of Revival. It is painful and humiliating, but it is the only way... The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us is broken. 

     This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will, admits it's wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus' way, surrenders its rights and discards its own glory - that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self-attitudes. 

     As we look honestly at our Christian lives, we can see how much of this self there is in each of us. It is so often self who tries to live the Christian life... and self, too, who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is the self who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others. It is the self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved. No wonder we need breaking!  As long as self is in control, God can do little with us, for all the fruits of the Spirit (they are enumerated in Galatians 5), with which God longs to fill us, are the complete antithesis of the hard, unbroken spirit within us and presupposes that it has been crucified...

     Brokenness in daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of God. And inasmuch as this conviction is continuous, we shall need to be broken continually. And this can be very costly when we see all the yielding of rights and selfish interests that this will involve, and the confessions and restitutions that may be sometimes necessary. For this reason, we are not likely to be broken except at the Cross of Jesus. The willingness of Jesus to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken too. We see Him, who is in the form of God, counting not equality with God a prize to be grasped or hung on to, but letting it go for us, and taking upon Himself the form of a Servant - God's Servant, man's Servant.  We see Him willing to have no rights of His own, no home of His own, no possessions of His own, willing to let men revile Him and not revile in return, willing to let men tread on Him and not retaliate or defend Himself. Above all, we see Him broken as He meekly goes to Calvary to become men's scapegoat by bearing their sins in His own body on the Tree.

     In a pathetic passage in a prophetic Psalm (a Messianic Psalm about Jesus), He says, "I am a worm and not a man" (Psa 22:6). Those who have been in tropical lands tell us that there is a big difference between a snake and a worm. When you attempt to strike at them the snake rears itself up and hisses and tries to strike back - a true picture of self.  But a worm offers no resistance. It allows you to do what you like with it, kick it or squash it under your heel - a picture of true brokenness.  And Jesus was willing to become just that for us - a worm and not a man. And He did so because that is what He saw us to be --  worms having forfeited all rights by our sin, except to deserve hell. And He now calls us to take our rightful place as worms for Him and with Him. The whole Sermon on the Mount with its teaching of non-retaliation, love for enemies, and selfless giving, assumes that that is our position. But only the vision of the Love that was willing to be broken for us can constrain us to be willing for that.

     But dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. There may be an initial dying when God first shows these things, but ever after it will be a constant dying, for only so can the Lord Jesus be revealed constantly through us (2 Cor 4:10). All day long the choice will be before us in a thousand ways. It will mean no plans, no time, no money, no pleasure of our own. It will mean a constant yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man. Every humiliation, everyone who tries and vexes us, is God's way of breaking us, so that there is a yet deeper channel in us for the Life of Christ. You see, the only life that pleases God and that can be victorious is His life - never our life, no matter how hard we try. But inasmuch as our self-centered life is the exact opposite of His, we can never be filled with His life -- unless we are prepared for God to bring our (self) life constantly to death. And in that, we must co-operate by our moral choice."

     Hard words for the modern day person -- steeped in psychology and not Scripture -- to accept. In the Bible, there are not many passages that speak specifically of revival, but one does confirm what Hession has said here. It is found in Isaiah 57:15-16.  There God speaks through his prophet and says: "This is what the high and lofty One says -- He who lives forever and whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to REVIVE the spirit of the lowly and to REVIVE the heart of the contrite."  And the context that follows suggests that this "contriteness" and "lowliness" stems from a remorse over their sin, wickedness and selfish greed.

     That's what we need to see. Revival does not come to those who think they are fine just the way they are. It does not come to those who believe they have what it takes or have their act together. It does not come to the proud, the holier-than-thou, the self-satisfied, or self-sufficient.  It comes to those who have been broken and humbled by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and thereby made contrite by seeing the ungodliness and sin that exists in their soul, and their desperate need for God's grace in Jesus.

     It comes to those who KNOW they are entirely lost without God, spiritually dead without Jesus, and powerless apart from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.  It comes to those whose inner awareness of personal sin and need causes them to fall on their faces in humbled lowliness and plead for that which they cannot produce, or receive, except by the graciousness of God who gives them what they could never deserve.  It is the lowly and contrite whom God revives, not the proud or haughty or self-contented.  Or to use a more contemporary term, it does not come to those who have a wonderful, glowing and undeflateably good self-esteem.

     God ever calls us to come before Him in prayer.  With what shall we come?  Requests that He notice how good we've been doing in our Christian walk?  Hopes that He sees what fine specimens we are?  Or with honest transparency that openly confesses our sin and lack and our desperate need for His grace?  It has often been said that, "To be full of God's Spirit you cannot be full of yourself."  It's true. For God does not dwell with the haughty and self-satisfied, but the lowly and contrite -- "to revive the spirit of the lowly, and revive the heart of the contrite."

With prayers for personal and corporate revival, Pastor Jeff

Streams in the Desert

Greetings Everyone!

     Today's thought comes once again from the same book as last week -- "Streams in the Desert" by L. B. Cowman.  Yet today's entry (under the date of "August 1") is not from her.  It appears to be taken (copied) from the testimony of a man she simply records as "J. H. M."   I share it because it took me back to an earlier time in my life when I was on my journey from unbelief to faith, and then from faith to obedience.

     Some people know the truth of Scripture but don't believe it.  Others know it and confess to believing it.  But the real test of knowing and believing is whether or not it results in obeying it, or obeying the One who speaks to us in it.  And it's this area of being called to obey that causes the greatest resistance in the soul, for only then must faith become visible in our actions and life. The inner battle in relation to consecrating our lives to God stems from the cost which consecration or obedience calls for.  What will have to change, what will old friends think, what hard thing we will we be called to do, what might we miss out on, or what will we have to sacrifice or give up?

     I speak from experience when I say that faith is never really tested or tried (to see if it's real) until we are called to act upon what we claim to believe.  Until faith moves from being a mere proposition believed to a lifestyle of obedience, it may be questioned if we truly believe what we say we believe. If my conversations with people are any indication, then many people in the Church seem unaware that the goal of faith is to give birth to obedience and a life of consecration (Rom. 1:5 / I Cor. 6:19).

     Below is one man's struggle in moving from faith to the obedience and consecration that are intended to flow from it. Enjoy.

Offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life. (Romans 6:13)

     "One night I went to hear a sermon on consecration. Nothing special came to me from the message, but as the preacher finished and knelt to pray, he said, “O Lord, You know we can trust the Man who died for us.” That was my message.

     As I rose from my knees and walked down the street to catch the train, I deeply pondered all that consecration to God would mean to my life. I was afraid as I considered the personal cost. Yet suddenly, above the noise of the street traffic, came this message: “You can trust the Man who died for you.”

     I boarded the train, and as I traveled toward home, I thought of the changes, sacrifices, and disappointments that consecration might mean in my life—and I was still afraid. Upon arriving home, I went straight to my room, fell on my knees, and saw my life pass before my eyes. I was a Christian, an officer in the church, and a Sunday School superintendent, but I had never yielded my life to God with a definite act of my will.

     Yet as I thought of my own “precious” plans that might be thwarted, my beloved hopes to be surrendered, and my chosen profession that I might have to abandon—I was afraid. I completely failed to see the better things God had for me, so my soul was running from Him.

     Then, for the last time, with a swift force of convicting power to my inmost heart, came that searching message: “My child, you can trust the Man who died for you. If you cannot trust Him, then whom can you trust?” That, finally, settled it for me.  For in a flash of light I realized that the Man who loved me enough to die for me could be absolutely trusted with the total concerns of the life He had saved.

     Dear friend, you can trust the Man who died for you.  You can trust Him to thwart each plan that should be stopped and to complete each one that results in His greatest glory and your highest good. You can trust Him to lead you down the path that is the very best in this world for you.  J. H. M.

Just as I am, Thy love unknown,

Has broken every barrier down, 

Now to be Thine, yea, Thine ALONE, 

O Lamb of God, I come!"

     Is God moving you from a faith of mere assent to the obedience that comes from faith (Rom. 1:5)?  Has faith produced in you that consecration the N.T. speaks of in Rom. 12:1-2? I have often said that what we believe affects the way we think and the way we think affects the way we act, showing by our actions what we really believe. If people were to read your actions, would they be able to see without a doubt what you believe? Has your faith in Jesus led to a consecration of your life to Him? By the grace of God can you pray that it would?

In the Service of Jesus,  Pastor Jeff