Friday, February 09, 2007

WHY DID I BECOME A CHRISTIAN?

Because I came to the realization one day that I was spiritually dead because of my sinfulness and lack of Jesus Christ in my life! I was left with a choice, either choose to continue in sin and misery and death or turn to God for the Forgiveness and New Life He promised through Faith in Jesus. I chose the later - I wanted to live and not die.

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ROMANS 6:4

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

Thursday, February 08, 2007

HE will silently plan for thee,
Object thou of omniscient care;
God Himself undertakes to be
Thy Pilot through each subtle snare.

He WILL silently plan for thee,
So certainly, He cannot fail!
Rest on the faithfulness of God,
In Him thou surely shalt prevail.

He will SILENTLY plan for thee
Some wonderful surprise of love.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,
But it is kept for thee above.

He will silently PLAN for thee,
His purposes shall all unfold;
The tangled skein shall shine at last,
A masterpiece of skill untold.

He will silently plan FOR THEE,
Happy child of a Father's care,
As though no other claimed His love,
But thou alone to Him wert dear.
--E. Mary Grimes


TODAY'S QUOTE: ‘God then began to show me that the word of God alone is our standard of judgment in spiritual things; that it can be explained only by the Holy Spirit; and that in our day, as well as in former times. He is the Teacher of His people. The office of the Holy Spirit I had not experimentally understood before that time.

‘It was my beginning to understand this latter point in particular, which had a great effect on me; for the Lord enabled me to put it to the test of experience, by laying aside commentaries, and almost every other book and simply reading the word of God and studying it.

‘The result of this was, that the first evening that I shut myself into my room, to give myself to prayer and meditation over the Scriptures, I learned more in a few hours than I had done during a period of several months previously.

But the particular difference was that I received real strength for my soul in so doing. I now began to try by the test of the Scriptures the things which I had learned and seen, and found that only those principles which stood the test were of real value.'

George Muller.


TODAY'S EXCERPT: We are expecting God, in the way of His judgments, to visit his earth: we are waiting for Him. What a thought! We know of these coming judgments; we know that there are tens of thousands of our professing Christians who live on in carelessness, and who, if no change come, must perish under God's hand. Oh, shall we not do our utmost to warn them, if God may have mercy on them. If we feel our want of boldness, want of zeal, want of power, shall we not begin to wait on God more definitely and persistently as a God of judgment, asking Him so to reveal Himself in the judgments that are coming on our very friends, that we may be inspired with a new fear of Him and them and constrained to speak and pray as never before.


TODAY'S BIBLE TEXTS: because He has appointed a day in which He is going to judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom He appointed, having given proof to all by raising Him from the dead. ACTS 17:31

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive the things done through the body, according to that which he has done, whether good or bad. 2 COR 5:10

Therefore I solemnly witness before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is going to judge the living and the dead according to His appearance and His kingdom 2 TIM 4:1

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a rushing noise, and the elements, burning with heat, shall be dissolved, and the earth and the works in it shall be burnt up.
All these things then being to be dissolved, what ought ye to be in holy conversation and godliness,
waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements, burning with heat, shall melt? 2 PETER 3:10-12


Wednesday, February 07, 2007

TODAY'S QUOTE: Newness of life is in dying daily to self - giving up sin and taking up the cross.

TODAY'S EXCERPT: Is there any ever any ground to be cast down? There are two reasons, but only two. If we are as yet unconverted we have ground to be cast down; or if we have been converted and live in sin, then we are rightly cast down.
From 'Streams in the Desert' for today's date.

TODAY's BIBLE TEXTS: And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. HEB 9:27,28

In your patience possess ye your souls. LUKE 21:19

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

TODAY'S BIBLE PASSAGE

JOHN 5:1-14 WEYMOUTH Translation.

5:1 After this there was a Festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
5:2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, called in Hebrew 'Bethesda.' It has five arcades.
5:3 In these there used to lie a great number of sick persons, and of people who were blind or lame or paralyzed.
5:4 [Weymouth leaves this verse out!]
5:5 And there was one man there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
5:6 Jesus saw him lying there, and knowing that he had been a long time in that condition, He asked him, "Do you wish to have health and strength?"
5:7 "Sir," replied the sufferer, "I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is moved; but while I am coming some one else steps down before me."
5:8 "Rise," said Jesus, "take up your mat and walk."
5:9 Instantly the man was restored to perfect health, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
5:10 That day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, "It is the Sabbath: you must not carry your mat."
5:11 "He who cured me," he replied, "said to me, 'Take up your mat and walk.'"
5:12 "Who is it," they asked, "that said to you, 'Take up your mat and walk'?"
5:13 But the man who had been cured did not know who it was; for Jesus had passed out unnoticed, there being a crowd in the place.
5:14 Afterwards Jesus found him in the Temple and said to him, "You are now restored to health. Do not sin any more, or a worse thing may befall you."

Monday, February 05, 2007

COLOSSIANS 3:23

NASB: Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, (NASB ©1995)

GWT: Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly as though you were working for your real master and not merely for humans. (GOD'S WORD®)
KJV: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
ASV: whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men;
BBE: Whatever you do, do it readily, as to the Lord and not to men;
DBY: Whatsoever ye do, labour at it heartily, as doing it to the Lord, and not to men;
WEY: Whatever you are doing, let your hearts be in your work, as a thing done for the Lord and not for men.
WBS: And whatever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men;
WEB: And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men,
YLT: and all, whatever ye may do -- out of soul work -- as to the Lord, and not to men,

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Waiting to be Led

TODAY'S EXCERPT (from 'Waiting on God' by Andrew Murray, Chapter 15 - Waiting on God For His Counsel)

'... we need to believe in the Holy Spirit as the Guide and Teacher of God's Saints when they wait to be led by Him into the things which God has prepared and which the heart cannot conceive - more stillness of soul to realize God's presence; more consciousness of ignorance of what God's great plans may be; more faith in the certainty that God has greater things to show us; that He himself will be revealed in new Glory: these must be the marks of the assemblies of God's Saints if they would avoid the reproach, "They waited not for His counsel"'

(See Jn 16:13; 1 Jn 2:27; Rom 8:14; Eph 2:10; 1 Cor 2:9; Ps 46:10; 2 Jn 1:2; Eph 3:20; Jn 14:12,21)