Simple Summer Fun In The Sun

Who are you holding hands with

“You must be an out and out Christian; you cannot hold with one hand the world, and with the other Christ.” http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/286256 via the Logos Bible Android app.

4th of July in Guernsey

Satans methods

“What Satan couldn’t accomplish as a lion, cursing Israel, he accomplished as a serpent, beguiling Israel and leading the men into wicked compromise.” http://ref.ly/o/be-strng/208550 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Above All Things, See To It That...

“Above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/51929 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Learn to the Glory of God

“Things that are profitable for this life are to be learned,—and to be learned, among other reasons, that hereafter they may be useful even in the cause of Christ. I have just been referring to languages. When I learned French, for instance, and other languages, I had no thought that they would ever be useful, in the service of Christ; but afterwards it pleased God so to order it in His providence that I had sometimes six missionaries for five and six months at a time in my house, and there were three different languages spoken at my dinner-table,—German, French, and English. Now the very fact of knowing these languages helped me in the cause of Christ. I am now continuing my correspondence in three different languages,—French, German, and English. These, in the cause of Christ, have been very useful. Not that I mean to lay stress on these things, as if they were of such moment that there would be no happiness without them. Not this; for the great point, after all, remains,—to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus, and to walk in the ways of God. But, if we have the opportunity, let us make good use of the opportunity. We must not despise the opportunities, nor put them aside, but make good use of them; because youth passes away, is of a transient character, does not last, and therefore the time is to be usefully employed in the cultivation of the mind and in becoming acquainted with the affairs of this life, all of which may afterwards be used, not only with regard to this life, but in the service of the Lord, and for the glory of God.” http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/296326 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Evangelism is not a professional job

Evangelism is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus.

Elton Trueblood

Chris Conrad, 5 Things Anyone Can Do to Introduce Others to Jesus, You Can! (Indianapolis, IN: WPH, 2007), 13.

Happy Birthday Becca

Today is Becca’s birthday so we went out to eat for breakfast and were surprised when I tried to pay the owner of the restaurant gave us the meal for free. After breakfast and devotions the kids enjoyed helping open her present.

Happy Birthday! VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Word of the Father By Rev. A.W. Tozer

 

 

Word of the Father! Light of Light;
  Eternal praise is Thine alone;
Strong in Thy uncreated might,
  Sweet with a fragrance of Thine own.
The dark beginnings of creation
  Had their first rise and spring in Thee;
The universe Thy habitation,
  Which art and evermore shalt be.
Word of the Father!

Word of the Father! Truly God,
  And truly man by incarnation,
Born to endure the thorns, the rod,
  The shameful cross, for our salvation.
Our sins, our woes come all before us.
  We have no friend—no friend but Thee;
Oh, spread Thy sheltering mantle o'er us,
  And speak our mourning spirits free,
Word of the Father!

Word of the Father, hear our prayer,
  Send far the evil tempter from us,
And make our souls Thy tender care
  Lest sin and Satan overcome us.
O conquering Christ, deep hell despairing
  Shall bow and own Thy right to reign
When Thou, with joy beyond comparing,
  Shall bring Thy ransomed ones again.
Word of the Father!

Lyle Dorsett, A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of a. W. Tozer (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2008).

The Sinner’s Friend

The first great principle is this: Be a friend to those you are trying to win. Jesus showed himself a friend to those who were lost. He is described as having been a friend of publicans and sinners; this (although intended critically) was good reporting. Jesus could have kept aloof from mankind, just as we can keep aloof. But he would have won no one that way. Instead, Jesus went to the sick, lost, lonely, distressed, and perishing, and moved among them as a friend. In this story we find him in the woman’s country, at the woman’s city, sitting on the woman’s well (vv. 5–6).
There is an illustration of this basic fact about the Lord Jesus in one of the books by Watchman Nee, the Chinese evangelist. Nee had been talking to another Christian in his home. They were downstairs, as was his friend’s son. The friend’s wife and mother were in an upstairs room. All at once the little boy wanted something and called out to his mother for it.
“It’s up here,” she said. “Come up and get it.”
He cried out to her, “I can’t, Mummy; it’s such a long way. Please bring it down to me.”
He was very small. So the mother picked up what he wanted and brought it down to him. It is just that way with salvation. No one is able to meet his own need spiritually, but the Lord Jesus Christ came down to us so our need could be met. Nee writes, “Had He not come, sinners could not have approached Him; but He came down in order to lift them up.”1
I wonder if you are like that in your witnessing? Do you keep aloof or do you go to others? Another way of asking the same thing is to ask whether or not you have contact with non-Christians socially. Do you go to their homes, sit in their kitchens, ask them their interests?
A great deal of our difficulty in this area comes from the fact that Christians have often looked at the world as if it would inevitably get them dirty if they should get into it. They have taken verses like 2 Corinthians 6:17—“Therefore come out from them and be separate”—as meaning that Christians are to have no dealings with the world, rather than seeing that the words only have to do with avoiding conformity to the world, not isolation from it. Jesus did not teach isolation, and he did not practice it. He said in his great prayer for us recorded in John 17, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one” (v. 15). When he departed for heaven he left his disciples in the world to evangelize it.
I am convinced that we need very practical ways of displaying friendship with the unbelievers we contact—the friendship that was so evident in the life of Jesus. For a start you might invite a number of non-Christian friends into your home for dinner. You might go to a concert with them. You might take in a sports show. Why not befriend your coworkers? Join a club, a choral society, a civic organization. It is not even a loss to go shopping together or invite your friends in for coffee. These are only beginning suggestions. If you are serious about taking the gospel to the lost, the Lord will show you other fruitful avenues of getting to know non-Christians. Just remember: Take the initiative and be friendly.

James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 313–314.

Shattered Glass As A Picture Of The Church

The most famous Chinese Christian of the twentieth century, Watchman Nee, once preached a sermon without saying a word. It was just as the Communists were swallowing up China, and Christians were coming under intense pressure to yield to the demands of the state. Churches were being closed and pastors slammed into jail. Because Watchman Nee was a widely-known and respected leader, many pastors and Christians looked to him for counsel. He was asked to address them at a meeting.
The great Christian faced a dilemma. If he spoke at this meeting, he was certain to be interrupted and arrested by government spies in the congregation before finishing his remarks. But if he didn’t speak, he would disappoint those who most needed his courage and wisdom.
He came up with a solution that was very “Chinese,” and very clever. He mimed his sermon. Standing in the pulpit, he looked out over the packed hall. The place fell to a hush. Picking up a glass of water, he stared at it with fierce countenance then hurled it to the floor, smashing it. Then he surveyed the broken pieces of glass with a smug, arrogant expression and spent the next five minutes walking around, crunching the glass under his feet.
Suddenly his expression changed to horror. Stooping down, he began sweeping up the shards of glass. He put the pieces on the pulpit and tried to reassemble them into a drinking glass, but it was impossible. Finally in despair he threw the pieces into the air. They scattered everywhere, and Watchman Nee walked away, his sermon finished.

The spies didn’t know what to make of it, but the pastors understood completely, and they left the meeting greatly blessed.
Forty years later, a pastor in Shanghai explained the parable. He said, “Nee himself represented the state, and the glass represented the church. He was telling us that the state would try to smash the church, and for awhile it would look as if they had succeeded. But soon the state would realize it had made a terrible mistake, because in smashing the church it had not destroyed it, but dispersed it.”
The parable proved prophetic. When missionaries were forced out of China in 1949, there were less than one million Christians, and the Communists were determined to wipe them out. But their attempts to destroy the church backfired, and instead of destroying it, they dispersed it. In the years since the Communist Revolution, China has experienced the largest and greatest revival in the history of the world. The last fifty years in China have been a reproduction of the book of Acts.*

More Real Stories for the Soul, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 264–266.

Open thy mouth wide

“under all circumstances there should not be a single trial that befals us, but we should look forward calmly to it, and say, “Jesus is able to meet all these circumstances; Jesus can help me; He says, ‘Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.’ Let me open my mouth wide, and see how the blessed One is both able and willing to fill it.”” http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/269555 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Mind on Christ

“if you are minded to let the world go, and lay hold on Christ, and be an out and out disciple of the Lord Jesus, I tell you this, as an honest man, you will be a happy man. Oh! how happy, how unspeakably happy, how blessed your portion as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh! it is a blessed thing to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/286696 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Yard Sale Time

We had a yard sale this weekend and here is Becca doing the books.

MAN’S GRACE AND GOD’S GRACE

A BANKER’S idea of grace is that he will give people a certain time to pay a bill or account, but if they do not pay up by then, woe betide them; but God presents men with interest, capital, and all, and gives it them as a free gift!

D. L. Moody, Life Words from Gospel Addresses of D. L. Moody, ed. G. F. G. Royle (London: John Snow & Co., 1875), 86.