Stand Your Ground!

June 14, 2018 — Craig T. Owens

“If you are going to live the life that God created you to live, if you are going to live to your full potential, if you are going to live the kind of life that never settles, you have to come to a place where you decide to stop running and instead choose to take a stand. 
 

“You have to eventually stop trying to be what everyone else wants you to be, and you have to stop choosing to become only what comes easy to you. You have to decide what will define you. What will mark you as a person? How will you be known by others? Your decisions are the direct result of truly knowing yourself. 
 

“When we run in fear, we are only postponing the inevitable. We will eventually have to face those fears. We will eventually have to fight those battles. Running only makes us weaker and makes our opposition stronger. 
  

“There comes a time and a place you have to decide, This is worth fighting for. This is where I stand. This is who I am. This is the life I have chosen. I will not run. I will not allow fear to move me from where I should be to where it wants me to live. I would rather die facing the challenge than exist running from it.” —Erwin McManus, in The Last Arrow (emphasis added) 

Check out my review of The Last Arrow here, and check out some quotes from this book here, here, and here.

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Thursdays With Oswald—Jeremiah 6

June 14, 2018 — Craig T. Owens

Oswald ChambersThis is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Jeremiah 6

[These are notes from Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Jeremiah 6.] 

     Providence is God’s oversight and in-ruling of the men on this earth, and men without the Spirit of God alternately disbelieve and hate the providence of God. 
 When we have the Spirit of God we do not understand what God is doing, but we know God. Faith is the process by which our confidence is built up in a Person Whose character we know, however perplexing the present things may be that He is doing. Fate is superstitious yielding to a person whose character we do not know and have not the slightest confidence in but have succumbed to. 
 

     If we cling to things that are going to be shaken, then God will not prevent us being shaken with them, until we learn to let go of everything that He has condemned. 

From Notes On Jeremiah

God is in charge. God rules this earth and the men on this earth. 

Even for Christians, this is a hard concept to grasp, but it’s impossible for men without God’s Spirit to comprehend. Christians may not fully understand what is happening, but they can know Who is making it happen. 

God tells us, “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3). 

God also gives us a choice between a curse and a blessing—Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. 
 But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 5, 7-8)

It’s your choice: Confidence in One you know (with His blessing), or superstitiously yielding to one you don’t know (with God’s shaking). 

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