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For
Those Seeking The Truth & Dynamic Living Christ is Victor |
March/April
2004 Volume
17, Number 2
Deviating from God’s Will
“For my sake this storm has come unto you.” (Jonah 1:9-12)
Many people do not realize how
they are the cause of the storms that come into their homes, their lives and
their churches. It is sad not to know how much harm you are causing to others.
Here a prophet was bringing harm to others. He was fleeing from the presence of
God. Any man who knows God and does not live in His will brings
harm to others. When we are born of God we have a responsibility towards
others. If you do not realize this, you will bring storms upon others. A woman
was once confessing in our meetings, “I know it is because of my sins my
two children died.” We pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.” But are we doing His will? Is your home the
Jonah was going out of God’s will but God drew him into it. God brought Gideon into His plan. God gave Saul a new heart. But Saul did not continue in God’s will. He thus brought a storm upon his family and it was destroyed. Saul had the privilege of fellowship with the prophet Samuel. But he broke that fellowship. Beware if you are making God sad about the appointment God has given you. If you are deviating from His will you are bringing sorrow and death and madness into your family.
Some
people come only half way through to conversion and go back and do much harm to
the
Joseph was in God’s will all his
life. He rejoiced in his sufferings. “I know both how to be abased and I
know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be
full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.” (Phil.
4:12) It is a great thing to be
satisfied in the state you are now in.
“But godliness with contentment is great gain.” (I Timothy
6:6) If your heart is satisfied in joy or in suffering, in want or in plenty
that is a true Christian life. Joseph was always with God — even when
cast in the pit, as a slave in Potiphar’s
house, as one condemned in the prison and also when he was on the throne of
Once as a young man I was anticipating a certain dinner. But just before that dinner God told me to fast and pray. I obeyed. God once asked me to wear very plain and simple clothes. Flashy clothes were then the fashion. People laughed at me. Some thought I was going mad. But that dress did me good.
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”(Isaiah 53:10) Those that are in God’s will, take other people’s sins upon themselves like Jesus did. They rejoice to suffer with others. Those that walk on this royal highway will have the protection of the angels and archangels. Heaven will be with them.
- N. Daniel
The Gift of Forgiveness
I can give you a little experience of my own family. Before I was fourteen years old the first thing I remember was the death of my father. He had been unfortunate in business, and failed. Soon after his death the creditors came in and took everything. My mother was left with a large family of children. One calamity after another swept over the entire household. Twins were added to the family, and my mother was taken sick. The eldest boy was fifteen years of age, and to him my mother looked as a stay in her calamity, but all at once that boy became a wanderer. He had been reading some of the trashy novels, and the belief had seized him that he had only to go away to make a fortune. Away he went.
I can remember how eagerly she used to look for tidings of that boy; how she used to send us to the Post Office to see if there was a letter from him, and recollect how we used to come back with the sad news, “No letter.” I remember how in the evenings we used to sit beside her in that New England home, and we would talk about our father; but the moment the name of that boy was mentioned she would hush us into silence. Some nights when the wind was very high, and the house, which was upon a hill, would tremble at every gust, the voice of my mother was raised in prayer for that wanderer who had treated her so unkindly.
I used to think she loved him more than all the rest
of us put together, and I believe she did. On a Thanksgiving Day— you
know that is a family day in
I sent
letters all over the country, but could find no trace of him. One day while in
While in that city I remember how I used to look for him in every store—he had a mark on his face—but I never got any trace. One day while my mother was sitting at the door, a stranger was seen coming toward the house, and when he came to the door he stopped. My mother didn’t know her boy. He stood there with folded arms and great beard flowing down his breast, his tears trickling down his face. When my mother saw those tears she cried, “Oh, it’s my lost son,” and entreated him to come in. But he stood still. “No, mother,” he said, “I will not come in till I hear first you have forgiven me.”
Do you believe she was not willing to forgive him? Do you think she was likely to keep him long standing there? She rushed to the threshold and threw her arms around him, and breathed forgiveness.
- D.L. Moody
Waterfalls and Canyons
When I was a boy, my parents took us to
On another vacation, we traveled to the
This is akin to the fear of God. It isn’t an unhealthy fear, but an overwhelming sense of God Himself.
If we feel a kind of fear and awe over a mere waterfall or chasm, how much more should we feel that way about the Lord, who is a million times more powerful than a cataract, a billion times more pure, and a trillion times more overwhelming and all-engulfing than a canyon?
It is that fear of God that keeps sin at bay in our lives and gives us a foothold for wisdom.
- Robert J. Morgan
Reality Check
“But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
- Proverbs 4:18
All-Availing Blood of Jesus
There is an apparently authentic story told of the
great Queen Victoria, so long ruler of
One aged
As the season came to a close one year, Her Majesty was making her last visit to the humble home of this dear child of God. After the good-byes were said, the old cottager timidly inquired, “May I ask Your Gracious Majesty a question?”
“Yes,” replied the queen, “as many as you like.”
“Will Your Majesty meet me in heaven?”
Instantly the royal visitor replied, “I will, through the all-availing blood of Jesus.”
That is the only safe ground for assurance. The blood
shed on
When
When the destroying angel passed through that night, he would not be permitted to enter any blood-sprinkled door, for Jehovah had said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
Inside the house, some might have been trembling and some rejoicing, but all were safe. Their security depended, not on their frames of mind or feelings, but on the fact that the eye of God beheld the blood of the lamb and they were sheltered behind it. As they recalled the word that He had given concerning it and truly believed it, they would have much assurance.
So it is today! We cannot see the blood shed so long ago for our
redemption on
Honour thy Father and thy Mother
I believe it to be literally true that our temporal condition depends on the way we act upon this commandment: “Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth.”
The Scriptures express the outcome of this command in many ways: “Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” “Cursed is he that setteth light by his father or mother.” “Whoso curseth his father or mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.”
It would be easy to multiply texts from the Bible to prove this truth. Obedience and respect at home prepare the way for obedience to the employer, and they are joined with other virtues that help toward a prosperous career, crowned with a ripe, honored old age. Disobedience and disrespect for parents are often the first steps in the downward track. Many a criminal has testified that this is the point where he first went astray. I have lived over sixty years, and I have learned one thing if I have learned nothing else—that no man or woman who dishonors father or mother ever prospers.
Young man, young woman, how do you treat your parents? Tell me that, and I will tell you how you are going to get on in life. When I hear a young man speaking contemptuously of his gray-haired father or mother, I say he has sunk very low indeed. When I see a young man as polite as any gentlemen can be when he is out in society, but who snaps at his mother and speaks unkindly to his father, I would not give the snap of my finger for his religion.
If there is any man or woman on earth that ought to be treated kindly and tenderly, it is that loving mother or that loving father. If they cannot have your regard through life, what reward are they to have for all their care and anxiety?
Think how they loved you and provided for you in your early days.
— D.L.Moody
Sacrificial Love
A little boy had a canary bird, which he loved very much. His mother became ill, and the singing of the bird gave her great annoyance. The boy was told by the mother that the bird gave her great pain by its singing. He went at once and gave the bird away to his cousin, and then came home and told his mother that the bird would not disturb her anymore, for he had given it away.
“But did you not love it very much?” she asked him. “How could you part with it?” “Yes,” he replied, “but I love you a great deal more. I could not really love anything that gave you pain.”
We must love God as this boy loved his mother, more than we love anything else, and also everything that grieves Him we must give up, however much we may like it.
- Selected
This newsletter is produced six times per year by the
Laymen’s Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and
distributed in the
This Fellowship
is an inter-denominational missionary and prayer group working for revival in
churches and amongst students in several countries. We invite every layperson
to become God’s ally in changing his or her corner of the world. We train
people in evangelistic work and to be self-supporting missionaries.
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