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For Those Seeking The Truth
& Dynamic Living Christ is Victor |
May/June 2002
Volume
15, Number 3
“Overcoming- With God’s Help”
"And
David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the
soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his
daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.” (1 Samuel
30:6)
A very distressing
situation indeed had arisen. David could not live safely in
Soon after David and his men had settled with their wives in Ziklag, the Amalekites invaded Ziklag and carried away captive all the wives and children of David and his men. Then when David returned to Ziklag he found that the city had been burnt and all that belong to his men were carried away captive.
So severe was the effect of the desolation wrought by the Amalekites upon David's men that some even spoke of stoning him. It was indeed a dark hour. How demoralized men become when their homes are invaded and their children taken captive. On every hand David was attacked, and even his trusted men seemed to turn against him, David went to God. At such an hour when most people panic and seek refuge in self-pity, David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
A religion, which does not support a man in the hour of trial and the time of testing, is no religion at all. It is just a fad or family tradition; it is a superstition or a sentimental concession to the belief of one's ancestors. But to sum it up in a word, such religion is worthless. But such is not the religion of the one who seeks the Saviour for the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation of his soul.
By saying that ‘David encouraged himself in the Lord his God,’ is not meant that he sat down in noble resignation and allowed the events to run their course. When one knows the living God, there is enough grace and strength with God to help a man to recover all his loss.
Faith is nothing but a God-directed action. Faith is never static. No doubt, the first step in faith is learning to be still, so that God can speak to you. Very few people learn this stillness. When your own thoughts and your own plans and the voices of those around you are set aside, then God begins to reveal His will to you. "Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalm 46:10)
Next, David sought God's will. "And David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all." (1 Samuel 30:8)
And David obeyed and pursued the Amalekites. God gave him complete victory. He was able to recover all that the Amalekites had carried away. When we are led of God's Spirit, there is total recovery for us in every situation. We should not faint at the odds that seem to be arrayed against us; we should encourage ourselves in the living God who is our Lord and Saviour.
More than ever, after
the attack on the twin towers of the WTC,
A brother whose house was burgled told me the following: "I wondered what the Lord had to teach me through the loss of so many articles which were in constant use in my house." This brother always tithed his money and this loss seemed strange and inexplicable. The police called on him one day and said, "Sir, the thief has been caught and all the things you lost have been recovered. It is very uncommon for us to recover all the stolen things. But in your case everything has been recovered."
While a Christian knows how to share his goods with others and his money, I don't believe that he should have grievous losses without cause. We must ask ourselves, "What is the Lord teaching me through these experiences?" When we have learnt our lesson, the Lord will grant us to see a complete recovery. "And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." (Psalm 1:3)
When we obey God and walk humbly before Him, there is a great blessing upon all the work of our hands. Now this blessing is for the spread of His Gospel. We should not deal with these extra blessings as though they are just meant for ourselves. They are meant for the spread of the Gospel.
When John Wesley went
to
God is granting us to see scenes of revival at several of our meetings. This is the hour for revival. This is the hour for fearless onslaught upon the devil's domain. A Christian can never be a lazy fatalist. A revival is the church remembering, the church repenting, the church repeating. "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works." (Revelation 2:5) Let us encourage ourselves in the Lord our God and advance fearlessly.
-Joshua Daniel
Small in Your Own Eyes!
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1 &2)
And the earth was without form, and void; and the Spirit of God was moving on the face of the deep. When the earth was without form and void the Spirit of God was able to create form, beauty and fullness. God commanded that the world should come into being. How exactly it came to be, we do not know. But God said it and it was done.
Before meeting Jesus, a man thinks he is a great person and wants to become still greater. God came into the void! Until a man becomes void and knows that he is without form in his heart, God cannot work on him. You must know that you are nothing and worthless. Prayer helps you to come to this knowledge.
It is good to come to Jesus to know you are nothing. A man who prays, very soon comes to know that he can do nothing by himself. Jesus came to this position. "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." (John 5:30) By yourself you can do nothing.
Prayer teaches us to
be as nothing before God. Moses said, "Who am I,
that you should send me to Pharaoh?" If you think you can do something for
God, God can do nothing with you. "Therefore if any man be in Christ he is
a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all
things are become new" (2 Corinthians
A devout lady who was serving God was praying that God should use her. She saw a white hand holding dirty rags and a voice said, "All your work is like filthy rags. Your righteousness and your service are like filthy rags." If you are aware of this truth God can take hold of you and use you. God came when all was void and created the world. He created man in His own likeness. He wants to give man all the nature of God. The world is yet to see the spiritual energy that can come out of one man.
We belong to the broken Christ, whose body was wounded, whose hands and legs were pierced. The cross will make us feel we are nothing. As we pray we become smaller and smaller in our own eyes and Jesus becomes bigger and bigger till He fills the universe. He says 'I in you and you in me.' He can come into you because He was broken for you. The 'nothing' that you are can blend with Him who is everything. People will see Christ in you. Your touch, words and life will be just like Christ's.
Into the void came God and created the world. More wonderful than the world is man whom He created. Prayer makes us 'nothing' before God. Into this 'nothing' comes God and makes one a new creature in the likeness of Jesus Christ.
- N. Daniel
Reality Check!
"Humble
yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time:"- 1 Peter 5:6
Giving is Living
A man was crossing by
foot a barren area in the western part of the
The man hesitated. He was terribly thirsty and, if by chance the well was dry, he would be pouring out his only opportunity for survival. Finally he decided to take a chance. Slowly he poured the water down the pump and worked the handle. As the last of the life-giving liquid was going down the pipe, up gushed a plentiful supply of fresh water. When the man departed, he left a full jug of water and reattached the note. But he added the words, "Try it. It worked for me."
Solomon offered the same pearl of wisdom: if you want to drink from the well, you first must prime the pump. This passage is about sowing and investing, giving out and having the faith that God will give back to you in return- someday, if not immediately. The Turks have a similar proverb: "Do good, throw it into the water. If the fish doesn't know it, God does." The idea is that giving is living- living in a way that's honoring to God. Here's how it's done.
Casting your bread upon the waters is not a give-to-get scheme. Frequently in God's Word the Lord promises that when we give, He will respond by blessing us. But why we give is just as important as what we give, and often even more so.
We do not give in
order to get. The statement in Luke
The word give appears more than 1,000 times in the Bible. Obviously, God considers giving very important. Proverbs 13:7 warns, "There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; and one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches." In other words, the person who focuses on getting ends up ultimately with nothing. While the one who majors on giving will have abundance. The Bible says that when we give, God may make us wealthy, but it may be in ways we could never dream.
A well-known German
preacher of the 17th century named August Francke founded an orphanage and took
in homeless children right off the streets in
Francke was so moved by her tears he said, "Wait a minute. Let me go in and talk to the Lord about this." He went into the orphanage, closed the door to his office and began to pray, seeking God's guidance. As he prayed, he felt the Spirit of God wanted him to give that woman his last gold coin. Trusting the Lord to meet his own needs, he gave her the money. He had no anticipation of anything in response; he just did what was right.
Two mornings later he
received a very warm letter of thanks from this widow. She wrote that because
of his generosity she had asked the Lord to shower the orphanage with gifts.
That same day he received twelve gold coins from a rich woman, and two from a
friend in
This is the attitude that God looks for among His people. He wants us to cast our bread upon the waters, to give without regard to rewards. That pearl of wisdom teaches us simply to do what is right and let God take care of the rest. I'm sure August Francke would say, "Try it. It worked for me."
Most people apportion their giving according to their earnings. If the process is reversed and the Giver of All were to apportion our earnings according to our giving, some of us would be very poor indeed.
God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing. If we fail to fulfill this divine duty and privilege we have missed the meaning of Christianity.
All I kept I lost.
All I spent I had.
All I gave I have.
-Selected
David
Brainerd
Wrestling in Agony for Souls
David Brainerd lived a life of holiness and prayer. His diary is full of the record of his seasons of fasting, meditation, and retirement. The time he spent in private prayer amounted to many hours daily. It was prayer that gave marvellous power to his life and ministry.
"When I return home," he said, "and give myself to meditation, prayer, and fasting, my soul longs for mortification, self-denial, humility and divorcement from all things of the world. I have nothing to do with earth, but only labour in it honestly for God. I do not desire to live one minute for anything that earth can afford.
"Feeling somewhat of the sweetness of communion with God and the constraining force of His love and how admirably it captivates the soul and makes all the desires and affections to centre in God, I set apart this day for secret fasting and prayer to God, to direct and bless me with regard to the great work that I have in view of preaching the Gospel and to ask that the Lord would return to me and show me the light of His countenance.
"I had little life and power in the forenoon. Near the middle of the afternoon, God enabled me to wrestle ardently in intercession for my absent friends, but just at night the Lord visited me marvellously in prayer. I think my soul was never in such agony before. I felt no restraint, for the treasures of divine grace were opened to me. I wrestled for absent friends, for the ingathering of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and for many that I thought were the children of God, personally in many distant places. I was in such agony from sun half an hour high until near dark that I was wet all over with sweat, but yet it seemed to me I had done nothing. Oh, my dear Savior did sweat blood for poor souls! I longed for more compassion toward them. I felt still in a sweet frame, under a sense of divine love and grace, and went to bed in such a frame, with my heart set on God."
The men of mighty prayer are men of spiritual strength. Prayers never die. Brainerd's whole life was a life of prayer. By day and by night he prayed. Before preaching and after preaching he prayed. Riding through the interminable solitudes of the forest he prayed. On his bed of straw he prayed. Retiring to the dense and lonely forest he prayed. Hour by hour, day after day, early morn and late at night, he was praying and fasting, pouring out his soul, interceding, communing with God. He was with God mightily in prayer; God was with him mightily, and because of this, he who is dead yet speaks and works and will continue to do so until the end comes.
Jonathan Edwards said of David Brainerd, "Brainerd's life shows the right way to success in the ministry. He sought it as the soldier seeks victory in a siege or battle; or as a man that runs a race for a great prize. Animated with love to Christ and souls, how did he labour? Always fervently, not only in word and doctrine, in public and in private, but in prayers by day and night, wrestling with God in secret and travailing in birth with unutterable groans and agonies, until Christ was formed in the hearts of the people to whom he was sent. Like a true son of Jacob, he persevered in wrestling through all the darkness of the night, until the breaking of the day!"
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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