DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT – WEDNESDAY WARRIOR! #37… Redemption through the Blood by G. Campbell Morgan.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. - 1 Corinthians 1:17-18.

Every day I need the Cross more . . . Every day I live this Christian life I am more and more conscious that I cannot understand the mystery of all Jesus did; yet more and more conscious that by the way of that Cross, and that Cross alone, my wounded heart is healed, my withered soul is renewed, my deformed spirit is built up, my broken manhood is remade; and every day I live I sing in my heart with new meaning...

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.

Let the water and the blood

From Thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Save from guilt and make me pure.

In speaking of the works of Jesus, Paul declares that we have "our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses."

Sin is not a small act. Sin is something which, once committed, cannot be undone. The broken law means a marring of the ultimate purpose. . . . Sin is never little. Oh, man, man! If you could but see your trespasses, your little sin, in all its magnified meaning, you would cry out tonight, "What must I do to be saved?"

God never meant that you should be pleased with that word, "blood." God reckoned blood so sacred as to say, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." It is not refined; it is vulgar, this shedding of blood! It shocks you, startles you, appalls you. God meant it should, and especially when you see whose blood it is. Redeemed not with the blood of bulls and of goats--but with the precious blood of the Son of God, the dying of the pure and spotless.

What happened in that dying I cannot tell. I do not know the mystery. I cannot go into that darkness. Alone He trod the winepress. Alone He bore the pain. You and I must stand outside. Oh, behold Him, the Perfect dying, the Sinless suffering! God in Christ bent to bruising! And as I see the mystery of the human blood I say: What means it, for there is no place for such dying in such pure life?

"Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world." "Who, His own self, bare our sins in His body upon the tree." "He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed."

The forgiveness of our trespasses can come to us only through His blood. God will give you perfect and full pardon now if you will trust Him, if you will take it of His grace, if instead of attempting to win it, if instead of attempting to merit it you will just come as a poor, guilty, ruined soul, for such you are, and, kneeling at the foot of the Cross, will take God's pardon through Jesus Christ, that is all. - The Westminster Pulpit, Vol. VI, pp. 61-74.

Loving Father, I thank you for the Cross of Jesus. Help me by the power of your Holy Spirit, to glean the principles… that without the shedding of the blood of Jesus, and His death, there would be no victory over death, no cleansing of sin, there would be no forgiveness, and no redemption. In Jesus wonderful name I pray, amen!

Be encouraged!
GBYAY

DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT – WEDNESDAY WARRIOR. #28… LET’S RENEW OUR THINKING!

Dr. J. Elder Cumming contended that "in almost every case the beginning of new blessing is a new revelation of the character of God--more beautiful, more wonderful, more precious." - J.O. Sanders.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. - Romans 12:2.

The motor home has allowed us to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, a sewer line and electricity.

One motor home I saw recently had a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. We buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world.

Yet we deck it out with the same furnishings as in our living room. Thus nothing really changes. We may drive to a new place, set ourselves in new surrounding, but the newness goes unnoticed, for we've only carried along our old setting.

The adventure of new life in Christ begins when the comfortable patterns of the old life are left behind. - David Roher.

Don't be fashioned by this world, don’t start to think like the devil’s children! Wow, isn't that a tough one to obey? It's a reminder to us, that what we think is one of the places of greatest spiritual warfare. Sloppy thinking is more than sloppy; it's dangerous, because we are fed messages that constantly distort God's truth, and holy values.

By the help of the power of the Holy Spirit, we can produce a spirit that should not find pleasure in the showiness and self-importance of this World; and which will regard all futile amusements and frivolities with abhorrence. We need to renew our mind to find pleasure in the things of God, by soaking in the Godly values that His word provides for us, a Holy mind with decent friends, decent conversations, and decent relationships.

All across this country, the undermining and destruction of the values that children were taught at home is going on in public schools. One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between right and wrong. One of the first things our schools try to destroy is that distinction.

The up-to-date way to carry on the destruction of traditional values is to claim to be solving some social problem like drugs, AIDS or teen-age pregnancy. Only those few people who have the time to research what is actually being done in "drug education," "sex education" or "death education" courses know what an utter fraud these labels are. For those are courses about how right and wrong are outmoded notions, about how your parents' ideas are no guide for you, and about how each person must start from scratch to develop his or her own way of behaving. - Thomas Sowell.

But rather than being exasperated by this world acting like the world, let's be transformed, by the renewal our minds, and doing what Paul said he did, take every thought, every word, captive for Christ, keeping in mind… Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here. - 2Co 5:17.

London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior.

As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.

"Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different. I don't want the building; I want the site."

Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God's, the old life is over, He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build. - Ian L. Wilson.

We often think a tithe is giving ten percent of our money, but an even more vital tithe, is giving ten percent of our thought time, totally to the things of God!

Loving Father, guard my soul from pride, my heart from callousness, and my mind from too much focus on unimportant things and not enough on your things. Teach me in my heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, what it means to be about my Father's business, especially in the world of my thoughts! I ask this in the wonderful and mighty Name of Jesus. Amen.

Be encouraged!
GBYAY

DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT – THURSDAY THOUGHTS #24… Are We Playing by the Book?

When a group of small boys, out to play ball, arrived at the play ground, they discovered that no one had brought a ball. "Forget the ball," said one impatiently. "Let's get on with the game."

We are trying to play without the ball when the Church tries to evangelize before she has repented. The Church can do many things after she has repented but nothing until first she repents...

The Pharisees had many good points. Our Lord said, in effect, "Do as they say." They read the Scriptures, prayed, went to God's house, tithed, and lived separated lives. They were anxious to preserve religion in Israel. Winning converts to the religion of Moses had been a good and right thing to do. But their religion had become institutionalized, and now they were propagating a dead faith, and every, new convert was a twofold child of hell, a lost heathen, and a lost proselyte.

Generally, we are propagating today a degenerate brand of Christianity. Unless the church repents, and has a complete overhauling instead of a tune-up job, our evangelistic and missionary drives may add for the most part only a multitude of proselytes who are both unsaved pagans and unregenerated church members.

Like produces like. Worldly churches produce more worldly church members. Churches weak or unsound in doctrine produce more of the same variety. Churches that operate in the energy of the flesh instead of by the Holy Spirit produce more of the same kind. We must improve the present quality of our churches, for converts tend to take on the qualities of the people who convert them...

If God ever visits us again in real revival, there will be many red faces as churchmen and religious leaders blush and hang their heads in shame for the silly and stupid ways in which we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh by the help of the world.

Drama will be unnecessary. We may not even need great preachers! Gospel jazz will slink away, and we shall be chagrined that we ever sank so low as to tolerate it. All this will vanish in the blinding light of the holiness of God, and no flesh will glory in His presence.

There is no greater hindrance to revival than a comfortable pastor settled and satisfied, coasting along until he reaches retirement, who does not want his flock disturbed or the status quo upset. He has long since lost his burden and concern for a mighty upheaval of God among the resters at ease in Zion.

He resents any intrusion into the complacency of a sleeping church, and interprets the prophet's call to repentance as an indictment of his own preaching. He is determined not to get excited, assumes a philosophical tolerance of things as they are, and he may speak facetiously of the prophet's seriousness. Sometimes his own people may get under conviction, and put him to shame by a concern he does not seem to feel.

This makes it exceedingly difficult for any revivalist calling Christians to repentance, but what a delight when pastor and prophet stand together! Most pastors understand that the traveling prophet can say things the pastor cannot say-that he fills a different role and follows an utterly different pattern. They complement each other. One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. The teacher plants the seed, the pastor cultivates the crop, the evangelist gathers it, but the prophet must first break up the fallow ground.

Breaking up the ground is never a pleasant, comfortable business, and churches sometimes resent the plow of plain preaching. Blessed is the pastor who knows this, and stands behind the lonely prophet who calls the church to repentance.

Loving Heavenly Father, I thank you for my life in Jesus Christ; Help me by the power of the Holy Spirit, to repent of everything that is not of you in my life. For your glory and for the extension of your Kingdom, in Jesus wonderful and mighty name I pray, amen!

Be encouraged!

GBYAY

DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT – WEDNESDAY WARRIOR! #12… IT’S TIME TO BE REFRESHED!

"Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up." – Catherine Booth.

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. - Acts 3:19-21. TNIV

We need to understand that all of us, at sometime, become stale in our walk with Christ, and we need to be refreshed! There are many reasons that this happens, but I don’t want to focus on why it happened, but on how we can be refreshed again, that we may become stronger and more active for His glory and for the extension of his Kingdom!

A person can be a Christian for many years yet remain spiritually immature. Therefore it's possible for a new believer to be far more grown up in the Lord than someone who has been saved for 40 years. Some of the older Christians don’t realise that they are in a backslidden state, and it’s only the mask of religion that keeps them in the Church.

To these people I say, God wants you for His own! He is a jealous God, and wants you to come back to Him! So repent and receive His promise.

A good example of this is found in an incident described by Ethel Barrett in her book; It Only Hurts When I Laugh. She said that when D.L. Moody became a Christian, he developed such a hunger for God's Word, spent so much time reading it, and was so quick to obey it that he became a "menace" to some believers.

His rapid spiritual growth was an embarrassment to certain people who, though they had been saved for years, never grew up in Christ. Week after week in the church Moody attended, he would share a new experience he had with the Lord. Finally, some of the older saints who just couldn't stand feeling humiliated by his exemplary life, went to Moody's uncle and urged him to quiet down his nephew.

Ethel Barrett drew this conclusion about Moody: "His robust spiritual health and bounding energy disturbed their napping; he was just too much. So, while they were sucking their thumbs, he was growing until he left them far behind; he grew more in a few years than they did in thirty."

The Promise of a Personal Refreshing…

This is a promise to every believer who is immature, those who have run dry, those who are discouraged and downhearted, who are run down, who feels that there is a great distance between themselves and God! Let us remind ourselves that God has never broken a promise!

Booker T. Washington describes meeting an ex-slave from Virginia in his book Up From Slavery, "I found that this man had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labor where and for whom he pleased.

"Finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with interest, in his hands.In talking to me about this, the man told me that he knew that he did not have to pay his debt, but that he had given his word to his master, and his word he had never broken. He felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise." – Douglas E. Moore.

Once we understand the promise, then there is...

A Pathway To A Personal Refreshing!
We need to return to a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, and turn away from our complacency, our compromise and our contrariness! in order to avoid any of this, we need to refresh ourselves in His word...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1:1-5.

It is important to realise that we can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, God almighty! How is it possible to have and retain this relationship? We have a helper, the Holy Spirit...

But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment - John 16:7-8.

It is the life lived in Christ that refreshes us, and the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth, He will keep us on the correct pathway...

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. - John 16:13-14.

" I had an overwhelming experience of the Lord's presence. I felt so powerfully overcome by the nearness of the Holy Spirit that I had to ask the Lord to draw back lest He kill me. It was so glorious that I couldn't stand more than a small portion of it." - Mordecai Ham.

When we repent and renew our commitment, to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, then the process of refreshing begins. We are refreshed by His Spiritual presence, refreshed in His strengthening power, refreshed in His sweet love, and a refreshing of soul-winning passion, is released in us! Hallelujah! What a mighty God we serve!

Loving Father, I repent of anything that is in me, which is not of you, wash me in the precious blood of Jesus. I receive your forgiveness. I commit my life afresh to you, and ask you by the power of the Holy Spirit, to help me begin the process of my refreshing, I ask this in the wonderful name of Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, Amen!

Be encouraged!
GBYAY

DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT – WEDNESDAY WARRIOR! #5.

It is good to be back after my blogging furlough. Thanks to all of you, for your prayers, and words of encouragement. Now that I feel refreshed, I am ready to get straight back into it…

Are We Playing by the Book? – Vance Havner:

When a group of small boys, out to play ball, arrived at the play ground, they discovered that no one had brought a ball. "Forget the ball," said one impatiently. "Let's get on with the game."

We are trying to play without the ball when the Church tries to evangelize before she has repented. The Church can do many things after she has repented but nothing until first she repents...

The Pharisees had many good points. Our Lord said, in effect, "Do as they say." They read the Scriptures, prayed, went to God's house, tithed, and lived separated lives. They were anxious to preserve religion in Israel.

Winning converts to the religion of Moses had been a good and right thing to do. But their religion had become institutionalized, and now they were propagating a dead faith, and every, new convert was a twofold child of hell, a lost heathen, and a lost proselyte. Generally, we are propagating today a degenerate brand of Christianity.

Unless the church repents, and has a complete overhauling instead of a tune-up job, our evangelistic and missionary drives may add for the most part only a multitude of proselytes who are both unsaved pagans and unregenerated church members. Like produces like.

Worldly churches produce more worldly church members. Churches weak or unsound in doctrine produce more of the same variety. Churches that operate in the energy of the flesh instead of by the Holy Spirit produce more of the same kind. We must improve the present quality of our churches, for converts tend to take on the qualities of the people who convert them...

If God ever visits us again in real revival, there will be many red faces as churchmen and religious leaders blush and hang their heads in shame for the silly and stupid ways in which we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh by the help of the world. Drama will be unnecessary. We may not even need great preachers! Gospel jazz will slink away, and we shall be chagrined that we ever sank so low as to tolerate it. All this will vanish in the blinding light of the holiness of God, and no flesh will glory in His presence...

There is no greater hindrance to revival than a comfortable pastor settled and satisfied, coasting along until he reaches retirement, who does not want his flock disturbed or the status quo upset. He has long since lost his burden and concern for a mighty upheaval of God among the resters at ease in Zion. He resents any intrusion into the complacency of a sleeping church, and interprets the prophet's call to repentance as an indictment of his own preaching.

He is determined not to get excited, assumes a philosophical tolerance of things as they are, and he may speak facetiously of the prophet's seriousness. Sometimes his own people may get under conviction, and put him to shame by a concern he does not seem to feel. This makes it exceedingly difficult for any revivalist calling Christians to repentance, but what a delight when pastor and prophet stand together!

Most pastors understand that the traveling prophet can say things the pastor cannot say-that he fills a different role and follows an utterly different pattern. They complement each other. One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. The teacher plants the seed, the pastor cultivates the crop, the evangelist gathers it, but the prophet must first break up the fallow ground. Breaking up the ground is never a pleasant, comfortable business, and churches sometimes resent the plow of plain preaching. Blessed is the pastor, who knows this, and stands behind the lonely prophet who calls the church to repentance.

Hallelujah! What a great fighting word!

Loving Father, help me by the power of the Holy Spirit,help me to hunger and thirst after you and your word, and to stand behind your prophets, as they seek to bring the Church into revival. I ask this in the wonderful Name of Jesus. Amen.

Be encouraged!
GBYAY