Pray Without Ceasing

PRAY WITHOUT CEASING

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). There is a great difference between prayer and the life of prayer. Almost everyone prays, but very few pray without ceasing. This is the habit of devotion. This is the altar of incense ever burning in the Holy Place. This is the fragrance of a heart that lives in the presence of the Holy One, and breathes the very life of God. This is the deep undertone of a sanctified life. It is from this that the sweetness, the gladness, the holiness, and the helpfulness come. Lord, teach us the habit of prayer, the prayer that springs spontaneously from the heart, and which neither secular duty, satanic temptation, nor the waves of sorrow, can interrupt, but which is only stimulated by the things that try us, until every experience becomes transformed into an occasion for communion and fellowship with God.

–A. B. Simpson

Be Thankful in Adversity.

Many will thank God when He gives; Job thanks Him when He takes away, because he knew that God would work good out of it. We read of saints with harps in their hands (Rev. 14.2), an emblem of praise.

We meet many Christians who have tears in their eyes, and complaints in their mouths; but there are few with their harps in their hands, who praise God in affliction.

To be thankful in affliction is a work peculiar to a saint. Every bird can sing in spring, but some birds will sing in the dead of winter. Everyone, almost, can be thankful in prosperity, but a true saint can be thankful in adversity. A good Christian will bless God, not only at sun-rise, but at sun-set.

Well may we, in the worst that befalls us, have a psalm of thankfulness, because all things work for good. Oh, be much in blessing of God: we will thank Him that doth befriend us.

–Thomas Watson

Handling The Sword

HANDLING THE SWORD

“How are we to handle this sword of ‘It is written’? First, with deepest reverence. Let every word that God has spoken be law and gospel to you. Never trifle with it; never try to evade its force or change its meaning. God speaks to you in this book as much as if he came to the top of Sinai and lifted up his voice with thunder.

I like to open the Bible and pray, ‘Lord God, let the words leap off the page into my soul; make them vivid, powerful, and fresh to my heart.’”

Our Lord Himself felt the power of the Word. It was not so much the devil who felt the power of ‘It is written” as Christ Himself. The manhood of Christ felt an awe of the Word of God, and so the Word became a power to Christ. To trifle with Scripture is to deprive yourself of its aid. Reverence it, and look up to God with devout gratitude for having given it to you.

–Charles Spurgeon, Spiritual Warfare in a Believer’s Life (P.81)

source:

The Berean Call

The Fundamental Message of Christianity

The Fundamental Message of Christianity

 by David W. Lowe

Because Jesus Christ is equal with God (Phi 2:6) and created all persons (Joh 1:1-9), he has inherent sovereign authority over all humanity and the universe. This means you and I must surrender to the authority of Jesus Christ. It is one thing to call him Master and Lord with your mouth, and quite another to make him the Master and Lord of your words, thoughts, and actions by obeying his commands in complete humility. He cannot be your Savior unless he is first your Master and Lord. If you have a problem with the idea of a Sovereign God ruling over your thoughts and actions, then you must question whether you are truly a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is King of Kings, seated at the right hand of the throne of God, and has all authority and power. As the righteous judge of mankind, his kingdom stands eternally opposed to sin and rebellion. Just as an inventor has the inherent rights to an invention or an author holds the copyright for a book he has written, so the Lord has the inherent rights to the earth he created and everyone in it. Because he holds the patent to the creation, he has the right to demand how it is used and how we interact and conduct ourselves within it. If that omnipotence and omniscience were the only reason to worship and obey him, it would be enough. But he not only created the world and everyone in it, he became one of us, and willingly offered himself to be butchered and crucified by his own creation in order to provide for its salvation.

How could I not bow in reverence and amazement to a King such as this? Earthly kings desire power, wealth, and fame, but this King desires mercy, servanthood, and sacrifice. This King humbled himself below all of his subjects in order to save them from their sins. Instead of giving me justice and crushing me back into dust, he vowed to save me in his boundless mercy. In the ultimate of paradoxes, God used my murder of his Son to be the medium by which I am saved! On the cross, the sinless Lamb became a curse so that a sinful human being like yourself could have his righteousness credited to your account by trusting in his blood atonement for forgiveness. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of your sins, and you remain a magnet of the wrath of God. But the perfect, sinless blood of Jesus Christ can remit the sin of every person who repents and trusts in his sacrifice.

Every knee will bow and acknowledge his authority, because he has earned the right to rule and receive all glory and honor through his perfect sacrifice and resurrection from the dead. Come to him in humility, understanding the quantum lengths to which he descended in order to become a human being and experience a gruesome, excruciating death at your bloody hands. Put your trust in his sacrificial atonement for your acts of rebellion against him, realizing his perfect existence was crediting to your sinful account. Believe the eyewitnesses of his resurrection from the dead and ascension to heaven. Then, pick up a cross daily in gratitude, obey his commandments in the Word of God with joy, and follow him without wavering, no matter the price.

Perfecting Holiness

The flesh wearies greatly of the holiness of God! I can testify to that. From time to time in my Christian life I have gotten discouraged at God. It is not a simple thing to reconcile God’s love and grace with His awful holiness and justice. On one hand, the New Testament tells us that the believer is forgiven, redeemed, justified, accepted in the beloved, blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, holy and without blame before God, and seated in the heavenlies (Ephesians 1-3). On the other hand, the same New Testament tells us that the believer must be exceedingly careful about how he lives before God. We are to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1), which is the highest conceivable standard. The believer who does not pursue this is in danger of being judged (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:13-17; 9:26-27; 11:27-32; Hebrews 13:4; 2 John 8-11; Revelation 2:4-5, 16, 22-23; 3:15-16). There is even a sin unto death (1 John 5:16-17; Acts 5:1-11; 1 Corinthians 11:30). Thus there must be many warnings in the Christian life (Acts 20:31; Colossians 1:28; 2 Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:13; 2:15).

These things seem to be contradictory to the fallen flesh and to the natural man, but they are two sides of the same compassionate, thrice holy God, and to reject either one is reject the true God for an idol.

Quote: David Cloud, Way of Life

The Light of God’s Word

Keep the Light On!

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).

I’ve been asked, in view of what many of our readers have recognized and experienced as an unprecedented and pervasive seduction and deception in Christendom, how I handle apostasy and what I recommend to deal with it. Beyond my grieving over what I see many of my brothers and sisters in Christ being caught up in and subjected to (to which I’m also vulnerable), the prevention for being overcome by such darkness (as well as deliverance from it) is simply staying in the light of God’s Word.

Satan’s grand scheme is to abolish the Scriptures. A believer’s antidote is to continue in, comprehend, and contend for what God has revealed in His Word. That may be obvious to many, but if it’s just an observation without application, it’s a prelude to the light being extinguished.

T. A. McMahon

source:

The Berean Call

Jesus – The Lamb of God

Many people in the church today do not really understand the connection between the Old Testament sacrifices and the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.

John the Baptist used the phrase, “Look the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” in John 1:29.

The Jews of the day were familiar with sacrifices for they were necessary for use in the temples. The priests would kill the lamb that the man had laid his hands on confessing his sin. The shed blood was sprinkled on the altar. The early ceremonies were a foreshadow of Jesus’ death on the cross.  The Old Testament prophecies are imperative to understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment and the only way we can be saved. Eternal death will pass us over.

In the same way, shed blood was painted on the doorposts on Passover. Those who followed directions were spared their lives. It is the same today. Christ’s blood spares us. If only we call on Him, and allow Jesus to be Lord of our lives.

Those who believed repented of their sin, and were baptised.

Behold the Lamb of God will return soon. Not as a Lamb this time, for He has already given His life. He is waiting for you to give Him your life.

He is coming again… this time as a Judge of the world. Are you ready?

Tho Satan Should Buffet

“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)

 

The second verse of “It Is Well with My Soul” puts persecution and troubles in perspective.

 

Tho Satan should buffet, tho trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control,

That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

 

Paul was given “a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet” him (2 Corinthians 12:7). Almost every saint of every age could echo Paul’s concerns, for trials come to each child of God. “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you” (1 Peter 4:12). God had a purpose in Paul’s life, and He has one in ours, although Paul couldn’t clearly see the purpose, and, at times, we can’t either. We can, however, “glory,” as Paul did; or “rejoice,” as Peter advises, in response to the knowledge of God’s loving oversight.

(John D. Morris, Days of Praise, Institute for Creation Research, September 2, 2009).

Which Parts of the Bible is it Okay to Believe?

Jesus in the Old Testament

Jesus Always Existed

The teaching of the Trinity is a mainstay of the Christian faith. Genesis gives us the first glimpse. “The Spirit of God moved upon the earth”. Genesis 1:2

This hovering of the Holy Spirit teaches about the spirit of God over the dark formless earth before God’s first command. Then in verse 3 “Almighty God” speaks. This started a series of  acts of God to create all things.

When we read John 1:1-2 we learn that Jesus the “Word”, was there at the beginning.  The “Word, was “with God”  and “was God.”

So the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all there at the beginning. Colossians 1:16-17 says, “all things were created by him and for him.”

One cannot say that we can only follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, because Jesus Christ is God and has always existed. He has never had a beginning or will never have an end. He is eternal.

Those who seek God, will find Him in Jesus who came into this world, in flesh as a man, but wholly God.