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For Those Seeking The Truth
& Dynamic Living Christ is Victor |
March/April 2006
Volume 19, Number 2
“Get Right with God”
“O depths of the riches both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding
out!” Romans 11:33
Without any doubt, we are living in a superficial and artificial age. It is all tinsel, veneer and glittering chrome. In the event of any disaster or accident, all that remains are only bits and pieces and an unrecognizable mass of twisted steel. But most people stake every thing on the short-lived glow and glitter of their earthly possessions.
Unfortunately, this shallow veneer has overtaken many churches too. Most of the preachers and churches today preach a conversion which requires no repentance. It hurts to dig deep, to uncover the wicked motives that rule one’s life and confess hidden sins. It is some thing which human nature revolts. We hate to be exposed, to be searched to the depths of our hearts. But this is what the Lord Jesus does. Exposure and diagnosis are essential for treatment.
You never try to mislead your doctor by stating symptoms which do not exist. You want to be as exact as possible in narrating the symptoms in order to help the doctor to locate the problem.
Yes, there are depths in Christ, depths in purity, power and perfection. It only reveals our shallow desire when we look around and see the state of affairs of Christians today. The early disciples were men who could face any situation with deep assurance that their risen Lord would deliver them through and through. Jesus was more than adequate for them. Such was their faith and they were more than conquerors in the midst of an idolatrous and immoral society.
Christ is adequate even today. His promises are enough for you. As you get deeper into the Word of God and the riches in Christ, your heart is thrilled with a new vision and hope. You are right there in the mine shaft and the cable car plunges you deeper and deeper into the solid veins of gold in the quartz around you. It is all yours. He is your wisdom. He is your salvation. He is your sanctification. In Jesus Christ you have all these riches. He gave Himself for us holding nothing back.
My father was a man of great spiritual depth and he sought depth in others. In his life time he was enabled by God to bring literally thousands into the deep experience of conversion. Nearly all of them learned to pray and cultivated the habit of getting alone for prayer every day. No wonder, they were mightily used of God in healing the sick and in casting out the demons. The Word of God prevailed over all the works of darkness.
On the
other hand, the shallow Christians are always characterized by the light
hearted way in which they speak of deep men of God. The very son of God was not
spared from criticism. They called Him as a wine-bibber, friend of sinners and
Beelzebub. They belittled Him as the son of the carpenter. But Jesus steadfastly set His face
towards
Now, tear off the old paper and scrape away the thin veneer with which you disguised your true nature. Come to the cross with true brokenness. Call upon the Lord Jesus for a new life. There are depths of His love and riches which are still unexplored.
- Joshua Daniel
“The Antidote for Hatred”
Compassion is the most powerful antidote for hatred and bitterness that the human heart can find. It’s the one way to restore love to a broken relationship.
Byron Deel was a college basketball coach in
Six years later, he showed up again, two weeks after Byron had graduated from high school. It was an awkward meeting. He stayed about half an hour. And then he left again, and this time there was no contact for sixteen years. Byron told me, “My attitude toward my dad was everything that it shouldn’t have been for a Christian. He had robbed me of a happy childhood. He had failed me at every point. He had abused me. I hesitate to say that I hated him, but perhaps hatred isn’t too strong a word. There was a bitterness there that was almost a loathing. Whenever anyone asked me about my dad, I’d shut them off pretty fast. As I grew older, I put it all out of my mind, and there was just a blank spot there. I didn’t think about it. I could go for years without once thinking about my father.”
Then
out of the blue Byron’s aunt called him and said, “Your father is
in
He walked into the Intensive Care Unit and there was a seventy-one-year-old man, connected to monitors, tubes inserted into his body, surrounded by medical equipment. Byron hadn’t seen him for sixteen years, but he recognized the man. And something strange happened. As Byron saw his dad lying there helplessly, dying, strung about with wires and tubes and monitors and machines, all the years of hatred and anger melted away. He walked over and stood by the bedside. The man opened his eyes, saw Byron, and began to cry.
Byron said, “I wept, too. It was almost as though I could see going through his mind waves of regret for the wasted years.” Byron spent that day and the next with his dad, and he was surprised to find that he had a lot of feeling for the man. “The burden that I had been carrying around for years, without realizing it, was gone. We were able to talk, and I was able to share the gospel with him.”
Byron’s father survived that stay in the hospital, and was able to return home briefly. During that time, Byron had a second visit, taking his wife and daughters with him. And during that visit, he came to know that his dad had trusted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and turned to Him with all his heart.
Later the call came that his father had died. But Byron was no longer bitter or estranged. The compassion of Jesus Christ had taken hold, and instead of seeing himself as an abused victim full of hatred and cold of heart, he saw something else. He saw his dad through the Lord’s eyes, as a needy man who just needed Jesus Christ.
Instead of looking at your husband or wife and saying, “Why doesn’t he treat me better? Why doesn’t he do this or that? Why did I ever marry such a jerk?” look at him or her and say, “There is someone made in God’s image who is hurting more than he knows, more than she realizes. How can the Lord enable me to help?
-Selected
Reality Check
“As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried:
he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.”
-Psalm 18:30
“This is The Way”
“And
thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right
hand, and when ye turn to the left.” (Isaiah 30:21)
Have your thoughts become God’s thoughts? After prayer in Peniel, Jacob returned to his family with God. Have you met God? The mother of Samson met an angel. She came and told her husband. Then their thoughts began to rise higher and higher.
When you and your wife pray together everyday, one day you will pray only God’s thoughts. You feel you are swimming in the current of God’s thoughts. What a great blessing it is! When you pray, you pray the will of God. Rebellion pulls us away from God’s thoughts.
David’s beautiful son Absalom never came to reach the level of God’s thoughts. Thus he was full of pride. He daily looked into his mirror at his own reflection. He never wanted God’s thoughts. He was full of rebellion. His father loved him. It was a kind of faulty love. When he did not repent for murder, he kissed him. It was a wrong kiss. God doesn’t do like that, but He follows you with His goodness which leads you to repentance.
God followed Paul and one day overpowered him. One day God’s grace will overpower you. He is at your heels. All the power you imagined and wished for is there with Him. David wanted to be the king’s son-in-law, but God gave him the kingdom itself.
Daniel’s thoughts began to rise higher and higher. One day he prayed in God’s presence to see whether he was right with God and an angel came and said, ‘You are dearly beloved’. As he began to pray an answer was coming. But on the way, the powers of darkness hindered and delayed the answer.
There are powers of darkness around you, but you will conquer. The rebellion in your heart should die and then God’s thoughts and yours will become the same.
It happened so to Abraham. When God asked him for his son there was no resistance in him. The whole Heaven rejoices when a human heart comes to that level. God will bless the whole world through your family. Do you believe that?
Are you sure that by God’s grace the rebellion in your heart will die and God’s power will work through you to change the whole land? Have you conquered? Has the resistance to God gone from your heart? If God says, ‘Go this way’, will you say, ‘Yes I will go!’ If rebellion dies in your heart, you will hear God’s voice always. He will follow you with his guidance.
In
monasteries Luther learnt good discipline and good habits. He did some
mistakes. Yet, he was cleansed in the Blood of Jesus. Then he became an
apostle. He made great self-sacrifices. He risked his life when he condemned
sin in the Church. He expected death at any moment. The whole world may be
against you. Yet your spiritual courage will be unparalleled. You can say with
When you are born again, God’s aim is that you should become like one of His apostles. His aims and purposes are very great. But you can be distracted and turn away from His way. The world is alluring you. Remember the saints who kept the world away. Press forward towards His high calling.
- N. Daniel
“Susanna
Wesley”
It would be an
understatement to say Susanna Annesley came from a
large family. She was the twenty-fifth child of a well-known
Susanna lived in fear that her father would be arrested for his preaching. He was a preacher in the Dissenters’ church. The Dissenters were Christians who worshiped God in their own way rather than following the rules of the Church of England. In the late 1600’s it was against the law to preach for any church other than the Church of England. Dissenters had been branded, had their ears cut off, and been burned alive. Once, soldiers came to the Annesley’s home and took many of their belongings as a fine because of her father’s preaching.
Susanna dearly loved and respected her father. From him she learned to study and pray at the same time every day—a habit she would one day teach her own children. When she was nineteen, Susanna married Samuel Wesley. Samuel was not only a very committed minister, but he too was highly intelligent and well educated. He also loved to write. Unfortunately for Susanna, he was not a practical man.
Their first home was
drab and tiny. Samuel’s job at a small church in a village near
After a few years,
Samuel got a job in a bigger church in the country, one hundred miles from
Samuel spent most of his free time writing magazine articles and poetry, so it was up to Susanna to see that their growing family was clothed and fed. But in spite of Samuel’s shortcomings, Susanna loved him.
Her strong faith saw her through many hardships. Three of their first seven children died. Her oldest son had never talked. On top of that, Samuel made an important man angry by telling the woman he was living with is not his wife and what they were doing was sinful. This meant he we sure to lose his job.
During those dark days, Susanna turned to God for help. She was given a ray of joy when little Samuel finally began to talk when he was five years old. She began teaching him to read and found he had a very quick mind and memorized easily.
Then her husband was offered a job in another town. It paid better still, and a big house on three acres of land was included. Now they could grow their own food. But there were moving expenses, their growing family needed more furniture. They also needed to buy equipment and animals before they could do any farming. All of this put them in debt equal to a year’s salary.
The unschooled church people in the new place didn’t get along well with the Wesleys, who were educated and had famous and important ancestors. They also didn’t like Samuel’s political ideas and his loyalty to the king. A lonely Susanna turned to God for comfort.
One time while Samuel was away, the family was kept awake by gunshots and an angry mob’s pounding and shouting. Because Susanna was recovering from giving birth, a nurse was taking care of her baby across the street. When the mob finally left, the tired nurse fell into a deep sleep and rolled over on the baby and smothered it.
Some time later, an angry church member demanded that Samuel pay him some money he owed him right away. Samuel couldn’t, so the man had him put into prison for three months. While he was gone, one of his enemies killed all their cows, Susanna’s main means of support. Friends helped her and paid Samuels’s debt.
In 1702, a fire ruined two-thirds of their home. Rebuilding the house put them deeper in debt. Seven years later, another fire destroyed nearly everything they owned.
As if constant money troubles and problems with the townspeople weren’t enough, seven more of Susanna’s children died. Of their nineteen children, only nine lived to be adults.
Through it all, Susanna spent six hours a day teaching them. Determined that her children would learn their duty toward God and their neighbours, she wrote three religious textbooks for them. Her teaching was so effective that every one of them grew to love learning and godly living. Somehow, Susanna managed to spend two hours a day in her own Bible reading and prayer.
In the end, Susanna’s teaching, her daily prayers for her children, and her own godly example made a great impact on her world. While her sons John and Charles were studying at college, they started a club with other students who wanted to know and serve God better. The group became known as Methodists, because they had methods for praying, fasting, and studying the Bible at set times.
Later, tens of thousands
would hear John and Charles. John led the Methodist revival in
he wrote.
- Selected
“The
Source and Resource”
One morning with a
friend I walked out of the city of
I went to the guidebook
and maps to find out something about this river that kept on its way undefiled
by its neighbor for so long. Its source is in a glacier that is between
ten thousand and eleven thousand feet high, descending “from the
gates of eternal night, at the foot of the pillar of the sun.” It is fed
continually by the melting glacier which, in turn, is being kept up by the
snows and cold. Rising at this great height, ever being renewed steadily by the
glacier, the river comes rushing down the swift descent of the Swiss Alps
through the
Our lives must have their source high up in the mountains of God, fed by a ceaseless supply. Only so can there be the purity, and the momentum that will keep us pure, and keep us moving down in contact with men of the earth. Constant personal contact with Jesus is the ever new beginning of service.
- S.D. Gorden
“Do
the Right Thing”
Rob
Mouw isn’t a household name, and what he did
wasn’t of heroic proportions—or was it? This incident happened when
Rob was a senior at
Rob Mouw’s high-school soccer career ended with a loss to Willowbrook Saturday night, but don’t think for a second his career didn’t end on a high note.
In
Wheaton Christian’s [now
But the result was far from decided. Because there was just one referee on-hand, official time was being kept on the scoreboard so the referee could concentrate on the action. When Mouw was making his run at the goal, most eyes were focused on him and not the dwindling scoreboard clock. The clock read :00 afterward, but because the referee did not see the clock run out he felt he could not disallow the goal, and let the 3-3 result stand.
“I
was personally watching the clock because I like to instruct my players as to
what to do,” said
DiBernardo was a little frustrated about the situation, but accepted the tie and congratulated Wheaton Christian coach Wes Dusek afterward. At first, Dusek thought his team had tied the match because he too was watching Mouw and not the clock.
Dusek, however, informed DiBernardo
that the goal had indeed been scored after time expired and
How did Dusek know the goal was scored after time expired if he wasn’t watching the clock?
“Mouw came up to me and said, ‘When I shot the ball, the clock was on :00,”’ said Dusek, who was told the same by his assistant coach. “With quality people like that telling me what the truth was, I couldn’t doubt it.”
A game-tying goal against one of the area’s powers would have brought respect to Mouw as a top-notch player. But that is already true. The fact that Mouw declined to accept the goal—even though it would have been easy to do so— should earn Mouw respect as a top-notch person.
“From age five I was taught to play the whistle, so I just figured we had some time left and kept playing,” Mouw said. When told the scoreboard was the official clock, he told Dusek the clock did run out before he scored.
“We did the right thing,” Mouw added, “I would have loved to have it count, but it was our responsibility to accept the loss.”
Perhaps an asterisk should be placed next to Mouw’s record of 55 goals in a career at Wheaton Christian in memory of what could have been No. 56.
Score one for sportsmanship, Wheaton Christian, and Rob Mouw.
“And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”Acts 24:16
- 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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