For Those Seeking the Truth & Dynamic Living "Christ is Victor" May/June, 2025, Volume 38, No. 03 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
“Oil in the vessel of your life” “But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps” (Jesus, Matthew 25:4). When a man comes to Jesus, he learns wisdom. It is wise to take oil in one’s vessel. When one professes to follow Christ, he must have oil. One does not grow if he has no oil, and he prevents others from growing. He takes a diversion from the right path. If a converted person does not bear fruit, there is something very wrong. This shows he has no proper union with Christ. God decided there should be a new heaven and a new earth. Zechariah and Malachi prophesied that the Messiah would come but people did not believe it and ignored it. It is a foolish thing to believe that sin reigns and will continue to reign victoriously. Will you believe darkness is more powerful than light? No. When light comes, darkness flees. Jesus conquered even death. Some trees can only be used for firewood. They cannot bear fruit. But man is created with the purpose of bearing fruit. He should not amass wealth. Communism is fighting capitalism tooth and nail. “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isaiah 65:17). God says His word will prevail. Do not doubt the Word of God. Do not run against the Rock. You will be broken. You may gather many degrees and titles for yourself and emptiness in the soul. Dare you think you will be successful in your life without believing the Word of God? No! The people who mocked at my prayer and my love of the Bible in their youth, are now in misery. God has commanded a new world into being. The Bridegroom is preparing Himself. It is up to you to prepare oil. The call of the Bridegroom will come. He has laid the foundation for the new heaven and the new earth on the cross. Are you building on the Rock? The kingdom of Heaven is within you. Do not look here and there for the Kingdom. If we are divided personalities, hell will find place within us . … [W]e are afraid of poverty, want, and privation. Great men went through these experiences and came out none the worse. There is wickedness in highly educated circles. Students, when they enter college have faith in God. But by the time they finish their studies and leave college, they have lost their faith and they have no peace. Education will not make us happy. We will be miserable if we do not accept Christ. Why did the Bridegroom lay down this condition that the virgins should come with lamps burning? Are our lamps burning? New hearts are the beginning of the new earth. New holiness, pure living, new joy and peace and faith! These are the new force of heaven that will be released through your selfless life. This is the meaning of lamps burning. Peace restores and recreates. This is the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth. Pastor Hsi was working for the Lord in China. Once in one of his meetings two men broke into a fierce quarrel. One threw a knife at the other and the thigh of the other man was cut and bleeding. The people around wanted to kill the man who threw the knife. But Pastor Hsi threw himself into their midst and, speaking words of wisdom, tied up the wound. Peace was restored. People die early because of quarrels. The tongue turns into a sword when Christ is not in our hearts. When a family knows Jesus, they build the kingdom of God. They bring forth children who rise and shake the world. Susanna and Samuel Wesley brought forth John Wesley who shook England. The call of the Bridegroom cometh! It came to Hudson Taylor, John Bunyan, and John Wesley. Some may be converted, but have they got the oil that will make their lamps burn? Where will you get the oil? At the feet of Jesus. Go alone there to pray and meditate on the Word of God. Do not seek prominence. If you believe the Word of God, wherever you go, you can breathe peace on people. We must go to Christ. Do not go against the Rock. The call will soon sound, “The Bridegroom is coming.” Have you got the faith that shines in darkness? Christ deserves your all. Those who have faith in Him will lack nothing. … The only lack I feel is that, I do not have enough of Christ Himself. I want more of His Spirit. If you and I live like Him, the power of the risen Christ to heal people and to love our enemies will shine forth out of us. God wants us to be filled with His faith and peace. Our life will create faith in others. … The Bridegroom is calling! Have you oil in your lamp? —N. Daniel
“Jesus: His goodness and beauty” “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!” (Zechariah 9:17.) I have seen some breath-taking panoramic views of unbelievable natural beauty. But the best sights in the world cannot hold you spellbound endlessly. In Europe, when the winter snows come down and forest and glade, meadow and mountain side are covered by a mantle of pure white, it’s when winter colds and coughs take their toll, [and] men tire even of the beautiful snow and long for the Spring and Summer. But there is one thing of which you can never tire—Jesus’ love. To the one who has tasted Jesus’ love, it seems to get more precious and satisfying as the days go by. “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!” Only that which is good can have unfading beauty. The ancient Greeks invested their goddesses with seductive physical beauty. But it never occurred to them that their gods could never be truly beautiful without holiness. Again and again when poets tried to call their mental creations gods, they thought chiefly of the attribute of power, but their poor human fantasy could never think of so necessary an attribute as holiness. Surely they ought to have known that a god without holiness is no god at all. It was only when Jesus was sent down to us that man could comprehend a little of the holiness of God. Men and women dread the onset of age and lament the loss of physical beauty. Some have a figure which is statuesque in its dimensions, but how long does that beauty last? When Jesus comes into your life and lifts your heavy burdens and wipes away your tears, then a strange beauty shines through your life. This is not a skin-deep beauty, but a beauty that spreads to others. I have met some very beautiful people in my many travels, men and women of great purity, patience, and grace. Christ-given beauty ... grows even as the years pass. Even in old age a godly woman, who has a well-spent youth behind her, is beautiful. The infirmities, sorrows, regrets, and frustrations of the wicked are painful to narrate. As old age engulfs them, they appear to grow more and more bitter, restless, irritable, and gloomy. Life has to be taken as a whole span. Youth and manhood pass all too quickly. The strains and stresses of life take a most horrible toll. But to the one whose sins are washed in Jesus’ blood, there is a deep inward peace. There is an inner glow in his life, which surfaces in his words and actions. It is a beauty all of its own. The great miracle that takes place when you say to Jesus, “Come right in Lord Jesus, here is my heart. It’s all Yours. Until now it was fast closed against You but now with it my life is Yours,” is hard to explain, and hard to measure with a human yardstick. The salvation is a growing experience—first the birth, the New birth, then the growth. Unlimited vistas are open before you, boundless treasures of power and love are yours to explore and possess. “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!” I often marvel at what God has wrought in me—a man so sinful in my inclinations and bent. There certainly was no hope for me apart from Jesus. I once woke up from a dream, which made me so sad. It was simply this: I dreamt that I had somehow slipped from the path of God. The very thought filled me with anguish. There is neither goodness nor beauty in me. All I have is from Jesus. He took my innate ugliness, meanness, and wickedness on His sinless body. He died in my place and gave me His beauty. Jesus’ beauty is an enduring beauty. In any city suburban train, you can see them when the offices close, weary, haggard, listless, joyless, worn, and pitiful faces. There is no trace of joy on their faces—only tension. When they go home in such a state, they are sure to transmit their tensions, grumpiness, and cheerlessness to others. In fact they seem all set to explode the emotional bomb pent up in their personalities. It’s not only naughty children who are stubborn and wilful; men can be more stubborn—stubborn and stony-hearted in not yielding to Jesus. One of the men whose company and conversation I enjoy very much, was a notorious thief before his conversion. His life has become so beautiful that many are attracted to hear him. Upon a life so wicked and a nature so depraved, the Lord Jesus has etched His own beauty. Wherever he stands to speak about His beautiful Saviour, a large crowd gathers and listens to him with rapt attention. “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!” I went into a store one day, up in the mountains of South India. Looking down at me was a fearful image with a snarling countenance, its mouth open wide exposing sharp teeth, like those of a tiger. I looked at the man at the counter and said, “Whom do you intend to frighten by that image.” The man was startled at my question. It’s simply tragic that men cringe and tremble before demons, whose favour they try to win by costly offerings of money and long pilgrimages. A fabulous sum is being spent today … to buy charms, amulets, mascots, relics of supposed saints, all to ward off impending evil. Astrologers and religious quacks and self-styled gurus from India are engaged in a brisk trade, offering all sorts of cures, for all kinds of obsessions and torments. What a dark world of spells and counter-spells we live in? One woman wrote to me … how black-magic has been played upon her husband so as to take him away from her. Having repented for her sins, she has come to Jesus. Yes, she has Jesus to look to. What hope and relief Jesus brings to a tortured and downtrodden soul! When you come under the blood of Jesus, what a different world we live in. When cruelly tortured souls come to me, after several sleepless nights, when they were attacked by demons, what a wonderful Saviour I can introduce to them. When His good Hand comes upon them, the devils flee and peace and rest dawns upon them. “How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty!” Dear readers, yield to Jesus now. Tell Him that you can’t live anymore with the ugliness of your life thoughts that beset you. You long that His beauty be etched upon you, His goodness to possess and guide you the rest of life’s race. —Joshua Daniel “Reality Check” Has someone wronged you recently? Resist the urge to judge that person. Instead, forgive him and pray that God might use you to win the offender. – Warren Wiersbe “The Bitter Made Sweet” “And he (Moses) cried unto the lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” (Ex.15:25) Moses did not find a new spring, but drank afterwards the same waters which at first, they had found so bitter. So, God does not need to alter the circumstances of our life, but to add to them His presence and all-sufficiency, and they become transformed blessings. Joseph’s prison becomes a place of victory and service; Paul’s dungeon becomes a sanctuary of holy song; and Bunyan’s jail, a place of vision, whence he not only sees, but shows to all future pilgrims the celestial city and the land of Beulah. Moses did not make this tree, or bring it from a great distance, but simply found it growing just beside the bitter waters. Beside every spring of sorrow, there already stands the branch of healing, the tree of promise, the word of life, which will open fountains in the desert and make songs to break forth in the night. The lord showed him the tree; so when the Lord opens our eyes, how the promises grow vivid and become living realities, streams of water, clear as crystal, fountains in the desert, and sources of everlasting consolation. Paul sees one of these branches of promise, and lo, his thorn in the flesh becomes, instead of a messenger of Satan, a very angel of blessing. Jacob gets his hand upon the promise, and lo, the place of peril becomes the place of power, and the darkest hour of his life, the very turning point of victory and transformation. -A.B. Simpson “The Hot Water Bottle” One night in the Belgian Congo (today’s “Democratic Republic of Congo”), a Christian doctor named Helen Roseveare was urgently trying to help a mother in a labour ward. Yet the lady sadly died and left behind a premature baby and a crying, two-year-old daughter. How could that baby be kept alive? There were no incubators, no special feeding facilities, and nights could be chilly with serious drafts. One student-midwife went to fetch a box and cotton wool for the baby. Another went to stoke up the fire and fill up a hot water bottle. Then disaster stuck! She soon came back to inform Helen that the bottle had burst while she was filling it. “And it is out last hot water bottle!” she exclaimed. It would not be easy to get another one right now. Helen advised keeping the baby as close to the fire as was safe. “Sleep between the baby and the door to kept it free from drafts,” she added, “Your job is to keep the baby warm.” On the following day, as she often did, Helen went to have prayers with orphanage children who chose to do so. She mentioned the baby, the problem of keeping it warm enough, and the hot water bottle. The baby could easily die if it got chilled. She told them also about the two-year-old sister, crying because her mother had died. During the prayer time, one ten-year-old girl, Ruth, prayed with a bluntness that was not unusual among these children. “Please, God,” she prayed, “send us a water bottle. It’ll be no good tomorrow, God, the baby’ll be dead; so, please send it this afternoon.” Helen later noted how she “gasped inwardly” at the boldness of this prayer. Yet Ruth was not finished: “And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl so she’ll know You really love her?” Helen was put on the spot. Could she honestly say, “Amen” (“so be it”)? Weren’t there limits to God’s works? God could only answer this prayer by way of a parcel from the homeland. Yet in Helen’s almost-four years in Africa, she had never received a parcel from home! And who would send a hot water bottle—to a country on the Equator?! That afternoon, Helen was out when she received a message that there was a car at her front door. The car left before she could reach home, but on the veranda was a parcel! Tears pricked Helen’s eyes and she sent for the orphanage children; together they opened the parcel, excitement growing. From the top of the box, she lifted out clothes (given to the children), and then there were some other items. Putting in her hand again, she felt something … could it really be? Yes! “A brand-new rubber, hot water bottle!” Helen cried. She had not truly believed that God could send it. Ruth rushed forward: “If God has sent the bottle, He must have sent the dolly, too!” From the bottom of the box, she pulled out a small, beautifully dressed dolly. Looking at Helen, she asked, “Can I go over with you, Mummy, and give this dolly to that little girl, so she’ll know that Jesus really loves her?” The parcel had been on the way for five months, packed up from Helen’s former Sunday School class, whose leader had heard and obeyed God’s prompting to send a hot water bottle. One of the girls had put in a dolly for an African child. The promise of God written by the eight-century BC prophet Isaiah had been true in this situation too: “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). —See Helen Roseveare, Living Faith
“God at Work” A Professor of Surgery from Sydney University had just returned from the island of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America where he had been continuing his studies into the life of the famous biologist, Charles Darwin. He was reminded that even Charles Darwin, the man who propounded the theory of evolution, admitted the presence of sin within the hearts of people, particularly the natives of Tierra del Fuego whom he described as ‘the most savage people’ he had ever seen. Darwin wrote that he found among the people the most horrifying savagery and bestiality beyond description. But when he returned there after a missionary arrived to work among the people, he was amazed at the change in them. He acknowledged that the gospel does transform lives. He was so moved by what he saw that he contributed money to the mission until his death. He also wrote to a new minister in his home village: “Your services have done more for our village in a few months than all our efforts for many years. We have never been able to reclaim a single drunkard, but through your services I do not know that there is a drunkard left in the village!” Only the Gospel Can Transform a Nation. The Gospel is no gossip! -Selected “How to Grow in Faith” If you want to grow in faith, there are four rules that you must adopt. 1. Be willing to have a great faith. When men say they cannot believe, ask, “Are you willing to believe?” because if the will is towards faith, the Holy Spirt will produce a great faith. 2. Use the faith you have; the child with its slender arm muscles, will not be able to wield the sledgehammer unless he begins step by step to use them. Do not, therefore, stand on the boat’s edge and wait to be able to swim a mile, but throw yourself out from its side into the water and swim a yard or two; for it is in these smaller efforts that you are to be prepared for the greater and mightier exploits. 3. Be sure to put God between yourself and circumstances. Everything depends on where you put God. 4. Live a life of daily obedience to God’s will. Observe these rules and your faith will grow. -F.B. Meyer About Us This newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen’s Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the US, UK, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Australia and is supported by unsolicited sacrificial gifts of young people. For a free subscription or for other enquiries, please contact any of the addresses below. 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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