Unquestion Revelation
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Christ, God, God the Father, Holy Spirit, Jesu, John, Life of Jesus in the New Testament, Lord
In that day you will ask Me nothing —John 16:23
“In that day” there may be any number of things still hidden to your understanding, but they will not come between your heart and God. “In that day you will ask Me nothing”— you will not need to ask, because you will be certain that God will reveal things in accordance with His will. The faith and peace of John 14:1 has become the real attitude of your heart, and there are no more questions to be asked. If anything is a mystery to you and is coming between you and God, never look for the explanation in your mind, but look for it in your spirit, your true inner nature— that is where the problem is. Once your inner spiritual nature is willing to submit to the life of Jesus, your understanding will be perfectly clear, and you will come to the place where there is no distance between the Father and you, His child, because the Lord has made you one. “In that day you will ask Me nothing.”
http://utmost.org/unquestion-revelation/
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The Life To Know Him
27 May 2012 1 Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Baptism with the Holy Spirit, Christ, God, Holy Spirit, Jerusalem, Jesus, Lord, Pentecost
. . . tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high —Luke 24:49
The Holy Spirit’s influence and power were at work before Pentecost, but He was not here. Once our Lord was glorified in His ascension, the Holy Spirit came into the world, and He has been here ever since. We have to receive the revealed truth that He is here. The attitude of receiving and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives is to be the continual attitude of a believer. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive reviving life from our ascended Lord.
It is not the baptism of the Holy Spirit that changes people, but the power of the ascended Christ coming into their lives through the Holy Spirit. We all too often separate things that the New Testament never separates. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an experience apart from Jesus Christ— it is the evidence of the ascended Christ.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit does not make you think of time or eternity— it is one amazing glorious now. “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). Begin to know Him now, and never finish.
http://utmost.org/the-life-to-know-him/
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Leaving Sin City
25 May 2012 1 Comment
in Joe Stowell Tags: Bathsheba, David, Holy Spirit, King David, Lord, Nathan, Psalm, United States
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’—and you forgave the guilt of my sin” Psalm 32:5
A seriously disturbing commercial made its way to TV sets across America recently. The ad begins with a chauffeur opening the door of a stretch limousine for a woman who is dressed for a night on the town. As the limousine cruises to the airport, the driver looks back and tries to make conversation with the woman, who appears to be attempting to seduce him. As they continue along, the divider window in the car goes up and the camera cuts away to a shot of the car pulling up to the curb, where the driver gets out and opens the back door for his passenger. She climbs out of the car, hair neatly pinned up, dressed in a business suit, chatting away on her cell phone. While on the phone she leans in for one last flirtation with the puzzled driver, and then continues off to catch her flight. The commercial fades to the tag line: “What happens here stays here. Las Vegas.”
The message is obvious. Las Vegas is a place where you can pursue your lust and greed with abandon, somehow disconnecting it from the rest of your life and hiding it from friends and family. Check your morals at the door and revel in unbridled freedom. No guilt, no fear, no consequences. It is, they claim, an adult playground, existing solely for your indulgence and amusement, where your secrets are kept.
Before you start taking the bait “hook, line, and sinker” you need to know that what you do in Las Vegas—or anywhere else for that matter—doesn’t stay there. What you do is a part of you, and you’ll take it all home with you!
The words of King David provide ample warning for us. I would suspect that, with much of his kingdom away in battle, David assumed that “What happens in the palace stays in the palace.” However, his secret fling with Bathsheba was exposed all too quickly with the expanding signs of her pregnancy. His attempts to cover his tracks led him to one desperate scheme after another. Yet in the end, with the blood of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, on his hands, he found himself face to face with the prophet Nathan and the consequences of his sin exposed to all. His reign and service to the Lord would forever be marked by that tragic moment in his life.
More tellingly, Psalm 32:1-11 records that, even before the sin was publicly exposed, the pangs of David’s conscience kept him in anguish. “When I kept silent,” he writes, “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3-4). He didn’t leave his sin with Bathsheba behind in the bed of adultery; he was crushed by the guilt and shame that he carried with him.
When we choose to sin, we do not leave the sin behind without a trace. If you belong to God, the indwelling Holy Spirit will sound the alarm. And though no one knows, we will be haunted by the fear of discovery and the loss of self worth. As Scripture says, “You may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23)!
So join King David. Know the joy of being done with the cover-ups and finished with the secrets. Genuine confession before our loving and forgiving God will trigger His grace and forgiveness and will enable you to leave Sin City far, far behind!
YOUR JOURNEY…
- Did the Holy Spirit spotlight any area of your life that needs to be brought into the light? Go before the Lord in genuine, heartfelt confession, acknowledging your need of His forgiveness.
- What other lies does Satan try to feed us to convince us that sinning is worth the toll that it takes on our lives?
- How can time in God’s Word and in prayer help us to more quickly recognize areas of sin and struggle in our lives?
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Our Careful Unbelief
23 May 2012 1 Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Christian, Christianity, Evangelism, God, Gospel of Matthew, Holy Spirit, Jesu, Religion and Spirituality
. . . do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on —Matthew 6:25
“. . . do not worry about your life . . . .” Don’t take the pressure of your provision upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is unbelief; worrying means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us. Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us? Is it the devil? No— “the cares of this world” (MatthewMatthew 13:22). It is always our little worries. We say, “I will not trust when I cannot see”— and that is where unbelief begins. The only cure for unbelief is obedience to the Spirit.
The greatest word of Jesus to His disciples is abandon.
http://utmost.org/our-careful-unbelief/
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Fear Not
22 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Our Daily Bread Tags: Christ, Christianity, God, Holy Spirit, Isaiah, Israel, Jesu, Sunday
My wife became seriously ill during her pregnancy with our second child. As the doctors struggled to find the problem, she continued to grow weaker—dangerously so.
Watching her suffer was a helpless and horrible feeling for me, and there were days when it felt as if God were not hearing our prayers. One Sunday, while I was looking for comfort from Scripture, my eyes landed on the first verse in Isaiah 43.
“Fear not,” it begins, and ends with “you are Mine.” Instantly, the Holy Spirit made the words personal. The intimate way God addresses Israel reminded me of His always-present attention to us too: “When you pass through the waters . . . through the rivers . . . through the fire” (v.2). Each phrase rose up in crescendo, from the pages to my heart.
Our comfort in that hour came not from promises of healing or miracles, but from knowing we were never alone. We had many other frightening times, including just after Ethan’s birth, when it looked as if both he and Cheryl would be lost. But God had used His words to comfort us and prepare us for those harder moments!
Let these words be a reminder to you that you are never alone.
Too Much Skin? Christian Minister Talks Lust, Modesty, Fashion By Katherine Weber
21 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Christian Post Tags: Bible, Christ, God, Holy Spirit, Jesu, Lord, Lust, Ohio
With summer fashions seemingly getting skimpier every season, some men may be finding it increasingly challenging to control wandering eyes and lustful thoughts — at least that’s what one minister has confessed.
Ohio church planter Charles Hill addresses the issue in an article titled “Butts and Boobs” published on his personal blog, “Chazz Daddy.”
“Warm weather has broken out and my eyes are already tired. I am tired of seeing so many butts and boobs. From age 11 up…it is the trend. As a man…this is not good,” the Christian minister writes in his post.
Hill goes on to discuss the importance of modesty and staying true to the Lord, and suggests: “Let’s start by not giving eye candy for free. Work hard to balance modesty and fashion. It’s a chore, I know. My kids are in the latest fashions, but we draw a line on how much flesh can be hanging out!”
The Christian Post recently spoke with Hill who explained that the solution is not setting more rules or punishing those who dress inappropriately, but rather he feels what is necessary is “shaping the heart” to improve one’s relationship with Christ.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody how to dress. We need to think about how we’re reflecting modesty, how we’re reflecting values, and how we’re reflecting Christ,” Hill told CP, adding that immodest dress may also suggest immodest morality.
“I think the whole point has to do more with shaping the heart than shaping a federal rule. Jesus came to shape our hearts, not to give us more rules. Matter of fact, he did not like to rule people. He took the woman who was caught committing adultery and said ‘learn from this, go and sin no more,’” Hill said.
“I don’t think we need to teach specifics because I think the Holy Spirit will lead us there. I don’t think there’s anywhere in Scripture that tells you how to dress. Take Timothy, for example: women should not have braids on ornamental dressings in their hair. Do we literally take that today? No. It’s the principle around it, that we should not be trying to draw attention to ourselves in a way that would be distracting in worship.”
Hill argued that the solution to the pressures surrounding the growing exposure of “butts and boobs” is for young men and women to realize that they are far more worthy of God‘s eternal love than the momentary attention they receive through visual, lustful attraction. Men and women should look deeper and harness the true principle of attractiveness, which is to remain appealing to the Lord, first and foremost.
The Ohio minister added that men will always, on a physiological level, have lustful feelings toward women.
Hill said he doesn’t believe issues related to immodest clothing necessarily have to do with sex, as one of God’s first commandments in the Bible is to procreate. Rather, the issue has to do with lust, and controlling lustful urges.
“The first thing that God told us to do was to find a mate, the second thing He taught us to do was to have sex,” Hill argues.
“I think, like anything, the Bible doesn’t say it’s wrong to drink, the Bible says it’s wrong to be drunk. The Bible doesn’t say it’s wrong to eat food, it’s wrong to eat too much food. Anything in excess can be wrong.”
“What goes in your eyes, goes in your mind, settles in your heart, and becomes an action,” the Ohio minister said as a reminder to young men.
For women, Hill suggested that beauty and self-worth come from the Lord, not another man’s visual approval. “Put your heart and your values in the Lord and not in relationships of the flesh,” he said.
Hill is a church planter, consultant, and coach based near Columbus, Ohio. He and his wife, Tiffany, have two adolescent daughters.
Having God’s “Unreasonable” Faith
21 May 2012 1 Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Christ, Christianity, God, God's kingdom, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Matthew, Matthew 6:33
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you —Matthew 6:33
“. . . do not worry about your life. . .” (Matthew 6:25). Our Lord pointed out that from His standpoint it is absolutely unreasonable for us to be anxious, worrying about how we will live. Jesus did not say that the person who takes no thought for anything in his life is blessed— no, that person is a fool. But Jesus did teach that His disciple must make his relationship with God the dominating focus of his life, and to be cautiously carefree about everything else in comparison to that. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Don’t make food and drink the controlling factor of your life, but be focused absolutely on God.” Some people are careless about what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, having no business looking the way they do; they are careless with their earthly matters, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship with God first, and everything else second.
It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into absolute harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.
http://utmost.org/having-god%E2%80%99s-unreasonable-faith/
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Taking Possession of Our Own Soul
20 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Christ, Christianity, Epistle to the Philippians, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Luke, Mind of Christ
By your patience possess your souls —Luke 21:19
There are certain things in life that we need not pray about— moods, for instance. We will never get rid of moodiness by praying, but we will by kicking it out of our lives. Moods nearly always are rooted in some physical circumstance, not in our true inner self. It is a continual struggle not to listen to the moods which arise as a result of our physical condition, but we must never submit to them for a second. We have to pick ourselves up by the back of the neck and shake ourselves; then we will find that we can do what we believed we were unable to do. The problem that most of us are cursed with is simply that we won’t. The Christian life is one of spiritual courage and determination lived out in our flesh.
http://utmost.org/taking-possession-of-our-own-soul/
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The Habit of Recognizing God’s Provision
16 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Oswald Chambers Tags: Christianity, God, God the Father, Holy Spirit, Jesu, Peter, Psalm, Second Epistle to the Corinthians
. . . you may be partakers of the divine nature . . . —2 Peter 1:4
Before God becomes satisfied with us, He will take everything of our so-called wealth, until we learn that He is our Source; as the psalmist said, “All my springs are in You” (Psalm 87:7). If the majesty, grace, and power of God are not being exhibited in us, God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you . . . may have an abundance . . .” (2 Corinthians 9:8)— then learn to lavish the grace of God on others, generously giving of yourself. Be marked and identified with God’s nature, and His blessing will flow through you all the time.
http://utmost.org/the-habit-of-recognizing-god%E2%80%99s-provision/
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‘Stand Up And Pray’ Website Unites Believers and Social Media By Vincent Funaro
14 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in The Christian Post Tags: Christian, Christian Post, Facebook, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Prayer
Believers all over the world can now join each other online and exchange prayer requests with the new Stand Up And Pray Facebook application created by Christian entertainment company EGT.
“Stand Up And Pray.com helps family and friends cover one another in prayer,” said the company in a press release. “This Facebook application allows users to post prayer requests, ask friends to keep them in prayer, and give encouraging comments to their friends who posted requests.”
The creators of Stand Up And Pray wanted to encourage those engaged in social media to pray by providing them with an application where their requests would not go unheard.
Now they can connect to friends, family, co-workers, pastors and spiritual leaders by using Stand Up And Pray, an intiative EGT’s founder Justin Kazmierczak says was created from an unction he was given under the Holy Spirit where he was called to make a place for Christians to encourage and lift each other up in prayer.
He also cites 2 Chronicles 7:14 as further inspiration.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land,” reads the passage in the King James Version of the Bible.
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Kazmierczak feels that he’s answered the call with Stand Up And Pray and has also united believers around the world for a good cause, praying for the persecuted.
“Internationally, Stand Up And Pray has helped a Pakistani woman to cover her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ through prayer and help bring out a pivotal reminder of the Christian Walk: It is not easy to be a Christian and walk upright,” Kazmierczak told The Christian Post. “And on the other side of the world it may be illegal to worship Jesus Christ openly.”
“I become aware of an outcry for help,” he continued. “The youth of her church’s congregation got arrested and thrown in prison, most likely because of their faith in Jesus. We don’t know how hard Christians in the Middle-Eastern world have it.”
After hearing about this situation with the woman, Kazmierczak alerted every believer he could- even ones unfamiliar with Facebook- to pray for her until they would start to the dire predicament turn around.
And God began to work things towards the good just days after they received this news.
“Days later, I got a response from the Pakistani woman on Facebook,” he said. “All she did was just thank me for my prayers. She didn’t say anything specific, but I know God did something. It’s impossible for God not to move on our behalf, we just had too many men and women praying for the members of her church.”
Kamierczak aims to help isolated believers around the world by taking advantage of social networking. And Stand Up And Pray brings many Christians together in a way that would be impossible without the technological advancements we’ve seen in recent times.
Stand Up And Pray can be accessed at their website.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/stand-up-and-pray-website-unites-believers-and-social-media-74827/
