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For Those Seeking The Truth
& Dynamic Living Christ is Victor |
November/December 2010
Volume 23, Number 6
“For unto you is born this day in the city of
The simplicity, the artlessness and the purity amongst the Christmas characters seems so different from what we seek at Christmas. We are a very artful people today. When we come to the Christmas story, we see plain people, not educated people with big jobs. Today we have people who are so busy that they will not take time to come to sit and learn at the feet of the Saviour. I am seeing the decline in spiritual desire in many people today. It is very sad that some people go to a place and remain unrelated to the work of God in that area. Would you say they would fit into the Christmas story? Would you say that New Testament values have come into them? No, their religion is just a facade. They have not learnt to seek as those wise men sought.
We see a seeking heart and a simple seeking spirit in the wise men. Now if all our religion does not produce in us a seeking spirit which says, “I will do the will of God at any cost,” then it is good for nothing. The Christmas story brings to us that seeking heart.
What do we see in the Christmas story? A prophetic spirit. What was written in the Bible, centuries before, these people were seeking and fulfilling. They didn’t speak their fears. How every one in the Christmas story fitted into the plan of God! What is the problem that we can’t fit into the plan of God?
We have filled Christmas with artificiality and disobedience. We do not want to receive the real message of Christmas. How sad! If we received the message of Christmas, we would say, “I will take the good news wherever God sends me.” We won’t say, “Ah, it won’t be comfortable.” Sometimes it may be uncomfortable. Even when my heart was paining, I would forget it and preach God’s word. Joseph and Mary had to go through much suffering to fulfill the plan of God in their lives. Those who run away from the path of suffering will never build God’s work. They will only destroy and decimate the work of God.
Mary had to go
with Joseph to the city of
We have become very modern today. I don’t see any connection between the way we live today, the way we spend Christmas today and the real Christmas. Now we do not see any materialism in Christmas, any avarice or greed or anything of that sort. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Do you want a Christmas like what Mary had? Does your heart say, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord. I want to see You glorified”? We don’t believe in the values of Christmas—the simplicity, the purity and the artlessness of it all. We are such clever people today. We can’t say categorically, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” We will take two years to make a Spirit-led decision like that or even 20 years! Now we can see that all these decisions had to be done then, right at that moment. There was no time lapse. It was the fulfillment of God’s word right at that spot. Now that is Christmas.
Have you got such a heart which says, “Yes, Lord, Here I am. I will obey you whatever it costs me.” How wonderful it would be if we would see such obedience to God’s word in our hearts and families! What marvelous things will come out! There was no room in any of these people involved in the Christmas story to pursue their own agenda.
During these 63 years after my conversion, there has been only one agenda in my life—seeking the will of God and the glory of God. If you give me back my years of youth, I will seek His will with much greater purpose! Naturally I was foolish, slow to learn, slow to obey. But if you give me back my youth, oh I would obey my Saviour much, much more than I have done! We have followed one agenda—doing the will of God. We never cared for money or a big name. We have sought only to do God’s will and glorify Him. Now slowly I see people falling out of step because they have other agendas and I see them slowly deviating. As long as I live I will show the red flag and say, “You are deviating from what God has taught us and it is dangerous.” God gave us Jesus Christ, a speaking Saviour to guide us. Let us take heed of our heart and follow the Saviour with the one and only purpose of glorifying Him.
The angel told Mary, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon you and that thing, that shall be born of you shall be called the son of God.” My dear friends, it is for you and me to claim and receive the Holy Ghost coming upon you, giving you His thoughts, causing His Son to be seen through you. Then God’s great purposes will be born of you, not worldliness, not vanity or foolish talking. That which is born of you will be eternal. That which is born of you will be a demonstration of the Living Christ. Is that happening? Let it happen now.
—Joshua Daniel
“Reality Check”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
“Love is Stronger than Hate”
Of all the
stirring, dramatic events of World War I, the most memorable was an event that
took place on the first Christmas of the dreadful war. After months of
unavailing slaughter the colossal armies of the German Empire and
In
Then came Christmas Eve, the Night of Nights, the night on which our Saviour was born. Standing on their platforms in the hostile trenches, the men in grey and the men in khaki watched for an attack of the enemy. But no attack came that night. At length the night passed, and the December sun rose. It was Christmas Day, the day of the Prince of Peace.
At stand-to in the morning, the British soldiers on the alert held their rifles with numb fingers and waited and watched, the frost and steam from their breath rising like a cloud on the cold winter air. Every morning they had heard a hymn of hate from the German trenches in the loud music of a burst of artillery fire. But this morning the hymn of hate did not rise! The guns back of the German trenches were silent. A great stillness came down over both lines of battle. What was to happen that Christmas morning?
Suddenly the British soldiers saw three grey-clad soldiers rise out of the German trenches. This time they came without bayonets and hand grenades. Slowly, cautiously, and at first with pathetic hesitation, they approached and passed the line of their own barbed wire, and stood unprotected in No Man’s Land. In a moment, before the officers realized what was happening, men by the hundreds were scrambling out of the German trenches and the British trenches and running forward into No Man’s Land.
The mud of
The Germans
responded with “Die Wacht amRhine,”
and the English with “
So passed the morning and the afternoon of Christmas Day in brotherly friendship and mutual songs and the exchanging of gifts. Then the light of Christmas Day faded, and the men in gray and the men in khaki went back to their dismal trenches and took up once more the instruments of death.
Only an interlude, that was, in the chorus of war, only one incident on that far-flung battle line. But it was one of those incidents which create hope within the breast of man, which make us believe, in spite of the clouds of war and hatred that now infest our planet, that love is stronger than hate, that light is stronger than darkness, and that with the birth of Christ there came into the world a power which shall one day overcome the powers of darkness and bring in everlasting light and everlasting peace.
And, wonder of
wonders, this Night of Nights was for you alone! Had you been the only one who
needed a Saviour, still the Night of Nights would
have come. Still Christ would have been born, and still Christ would have died
for you on
—C.E.N. McCartney
“He Hath Put Down the Mighty from Their Seats”
“He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and
exalted them of low degree.” Luke 1:52
Here is a young
woman, Mary, prophesying. Elizabeth, who was much older to Mary
was calling her “the mother of my Lord.” Already Mary was receiving
honor. Thus God honors the humble.
If we heap sand together, the heap will be broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. The Jewish nation received promises from God. But these two families had so developed their spiritual life that they appropriated the promises and were at the top of the nation in faith and in contact with God. These families seemed to reach heaven. When parents are spiritual, sometimes the children become more spiritual. Without a real fellowship, you cannot have really spiritual people. John Wesley had a fellowship of earnest people. Each one’s faith in a fellowship helps one another.
Mary said, “Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” (Luke 1:48) She realized that she had become a world-figure. Jesus gave power to men over evil spirits. When Jesus sent out His disciples, He first gave them power over unclean spirits. Jesus brought power into this world. “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” (Eph. 2: 2) These evil spirits are always prompting men into sin. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:14, 15). The devil wants to frighten you about death. But Jesus took away the sting of death. Jesus has power over death. Power can be dangerous. To have power without character is very dangerous. Do not think so much about power as about the new nature Jesus has brought you. When you disobey the Word of God the devil will have power over you. When you fear God and walk in obedience to His Word, then the devil can have no power over you. You will get correct guidance from God only when you obey God’s Word.
God says He will give us the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth. We find in Mary the divine nature. As a young woman, she was the recipient of the divine nature. How blessed we are to think of Joseph, Mary, Zacharias and Elizabeth and John the Baptist and Jesus! When we think of these people we are lifted into another atmosphere. Jesus brought us a new nature. Your thoughts reach up to heaven and make glad the heart of God. Jesus made His disciples fishers of men by giving them a new nature. The deeper you go in understanding the nature of God, the more powerful your prayer will be.
God wants to reveal Himself to us. We must get rid of all pride and foolishness and know our God more and more in a deeper way. Christ has come to make known to you the God of heaven and earth.
“The Everlasting Love of God”
An infidel knight, in the wildness of his mad, Heaven-defying infidelity, determined to test, by the method to which as a knight he was accustomed, the reality and power of the God whose existence he denied. So, going out into the field, armed as if for combat, he cast his glove down upon the ground, after the manner of the ancient challengers, and cried out to the heavens: “God!—If there be a God—I defy thee here and now to mortal combat! If thou indeed art, put forth thy might, of which thy pretended pastors make such boasts.” As he spoke, his eye was caught by a piece of parchment fluttering in the air just above his head. It fell at his feet. He stooped and picked it up, and found inscribed upon it these words, “God is love!” Overcome by this unexpected response, he broke his sword in token of his surrender, and kneeling upon the fragments, consecrated his life henceforth to the service of that God whom he had just before defied.
Thus to all men’s defiance, to the rebellion of a world, to the godlessness of nations, to the blasphemy of individuals, the answer that heaven has always let fall has been, “God is love!” This was the message that came wafted down that night on the silent air in this sweet note of the angels’ song. This was the meaning of the coming of Christ. Cold was the world; shut were men’s hearts against God; defiant was the attitude of nations. Yet to this coldness, this defiance, this revolt, the answer was not swift judgment, but the gift of the Son of God as the Saviour! God does not hate us; He loves us with a love tender and everlasting.
Andrew Murray said,
“The humble man feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him. He can bear to hear others praised while he is forgotten because ... he has received the spirit of Jesus, who pleased not Himself, and who sought not His own honor. Therefore, in putting on the Lord Jesus Christ he has put on the heart of compassion, kindness, meekness, longsuffering, and humility.”
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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