This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Precious Jesus!
Therefore, to you who believe, [Jesus] is precious. (1 Peter 2:7)
It is important, while looking at these words of the apostle Peter, that we should lay our hands upon our hearts and ask, ‘Do I know what this means? Is Jesus more to me than gold or any other thing that can be desired? Can I truly say:
Dear friends, if we can verify the statement, it is not only satisfactory to ourselves but glorifying to our Lord! …
Those who are actually trusting Him and us putting Him to the test are those who have the highest opinion of Him. … Usually men feel sadness at an increase of obligation, but in this case the more we are His debtors, the more we rejoice to be so. …
How do believers show that Christ is thus precious to them? They do so by trusting everything to Him. … Our affection flows toward Him as all our hope flows from Him. … We have deposited with our Lord everything that concerns us, and we have no secondary trust wherewith to supplement His power or love. … Our implicit faith in Him proves our high estimate of Him. …
When saints have outward goods, they enjoy Jesus in them, and when outward goods are gone, they find them in Him.
From Christ Precious To Believers
Have you learned how precious Jesus really is?
The more you get to know Him, not only does His preciousness grow, but so does the hunger to know Him even more intimately! Don’t ever stop—let the Holy Spirit reveal more and more and more of this priceless Savior and Friend to you!
I’m in a series right now at Calvary Assembly of God called We Are: Pentecostal. This is the second time we have rejoined this series because, quite honestly, there is just way too much for me to cover effectively!
I have pointed out how most people in the Old Testament had the Spirit of God come ON them, but in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes IN Christians. And I’ve made the case that IN > ON (read more about that by clicking here).
The Infographic Bible has a wonderful graphic depicting the On/In nature of the Spirit in the two Testaments—
And if you would like to see a short video where I try to illustrate the difference between on and in, please check this out.
Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses. … The Lord commanded through Moses that you give us [Levites] towns to live in… (Joshua 20:2; 21:2).
The Israelite leadership designated 6 cities of refuge and 48 Levitical cities. It was a big responsibility for the leadership of those towns to protect both the innocent person who was being pursued by the avenger of blood, and ensuring that the Levites were taken care of.
There is one city that particularly stands out to me: Hebron.
This city was formally called Kiriath Arba: so named after the biggest, baddest of the Anakite giants who had lived there. This is the strongly-fortified city that was inhabited by not one—but three!—giants that the 85-year-old Caleb defeated (15:13-14).
Hebron became both a city of refuge and a Levitical city. Caleb also secured Debir, which became a Levitical city too (15:15-17; 20:7; 21:11-15). Later on, Hebron would be David’s capital city for seven years until he moved his throne to Jerusalem.
What would have happened if Caleb hadn’t defeated those giants?
Or if he wasn’t willing to take on the added responsibilities for fugitives and priests?
Caleb conquered in his lifetime to benefit people for hundreds of years after he was gone!
God still needs these forward-looking, boldly-conquering servant leaders. I want to be a leader like that, and I hope you do too!
This is part 46 in my series on godly leadership. You can check out all of my posts in this series by clicking here.
Hannah only appears in the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, but her legacy thunders through her son, and its rumblings continue to reverberate today. At first glance, it seems somewhat ironic that Hannah’s name means grace (undeserved favor) because we tend to think of a grace-filled person as quiet and unassuming. We don’t typically think of grace as thundering, but indeed it does!
Notice 3 P’s from Hannah’s life—
Hannah’s anguish drove her to God. Year after year her bitterness of soul kept her in God’s presence. And after God answered her prayer, her rejoicing continued to keep her in God’s presence. She was importunate in prayer.
But also notice that God was silent while Hannah prayed year after year. Oswald Chambers says, “God’s silences are His answers. … Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong [this wasn’t Hannah’s case], others because they are bigger than we can understand.”
God was going to give Hannah a son, but the time wasn’t right yet. God needed a strong man in a dark time, and it wasn’t dark enough yet.
Israel had to sink into even deeper darkness. While Samuel was still a young man, the Israelite army was defeated, Eli and his two sons all died, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord was captured. This prompted Eli’s daughter-in-law to name her son Ichabod—God’s glory has departed.
This darkness allows Samuel to lead the people into a revival and then on to victory (1 Samuel 7:3-10). But notice how God responded to Samuel’s revival prayer—the Lord thundered with a loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
God’s response was a fulfillment of Hannah’s prayer. After God answered her and gave her a son, Hannah’s song of rejoicing foretold God’s response that was coming years later in Samuel’s revival—“It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the Lord will be broken. The Most High WILL thunder from heaven….”
Moms, don’t stop praying! God wants to answer your prayer. The Holy Spirit will help you pray (Romans 8:26). God’s timing IS coming. He will thunder His thunder in answer to your persistent prayer!
If you have missed any of the posts in our We Are: Pentecostal series, please click here to access them.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Nothing Left Undone
Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time He waits for His enemies to be made His footstool. (Hebrews 10:11-13)
You see the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice rests in this: that the priest offered continually, and after he had slaughtered one lamb, another was needed. After one scapegoat was driven into the wilderness, a scapegoat was needed the next year, but this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, did what thousands of scapegoats never did and what hundreds of thousands of lambs could never effect. He perfected our salvation and worked out an entire atonement for the sins of all His chosen ones.
I infer that His work is finished from the fact that He is described here [Hebrews 10:12] as sitting down. Christ would not sit down in heaven if He had more work to do. …
But do you think my Savior would sit still if He had not done all His work? Oh no, beloved. He said once, ‘For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns’ (Isaiah 62:1). …
Oh, if the last thread had not been woven in the great garment of our righteousness, He would be spinning it now. If the last particle of our debt had not been paid, He would be counting it down now.
Oh, glorious doctrine! This Man has done it. This Man has finished it. This Man has completed it. He was the Author. He is the finisher. He was the Alpha. He is the Omega. … You are accepted perfectly in His righteousness.… ‘By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified’ (Hebrews 10:14).
From Christ Exalted
Friend, Jesus has left nothing undone that would keep you from God’s full favor!
Christ’s work on the Cross and His resurrection from the grave have removed every impediment that would keep you from God’s presence. Not sin’s condemnation, nor chaotic world affairs, nor the clamoring or godless people, nor anything you can imagine can hinder God’s favor.
Cling to this: He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
After Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, He appeared to His followers who were fearfully locked away. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.” And with that He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:21-22)
This wasn’t all Jesus wanted for His followers, because just 40 days later He would tell them, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about. For John baptized in water, but in a few days you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:4-5). Clearly, Jesus didn’t want His followers to stop at just salvation—forgiveness of their sins—He wanted them to be plunged even deeper into the Holy Spirit.
Check out this short illustration—
If you would like to go deeper with this topic, check out my post called In > On.
At the Lord’s command, Moses recorded the stages in their journey. This is their journey by stages. (Numbers 33:2)
Numbers 33:3-49 goes on to list 43 specific places.
The next chapter gives specific boundaries for Israel’s borders, listing 21 specific places.
After that, we read a list of 12 specific names of leaders who are to assign portions of land to all the Israelite tribes.
Our God is a specific God. No detail escapes His notice. Nothing happens by chance, nor is God ever scrambling to fix something I’ve messed up or to address something that I think is “unexpected.” God knows the end from before the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), including my specific role in His plan.
Let me say it again—Our God is a specific God.
Heavenly Father, you have a specific plan for my life. You have given me specific talents to use at specific “stages” along the journey of my life. Holy Spirit, help me not to lean to my own understanding, for it is far too finite and skewed. In all my ways—in all the stages of my life—I want to use my specific talents specifically to glorify Jesus.
Prescribed & Personal Worship
May 12, 2020 — Craig T. OwensBut you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put His Name there for His dwelling (Deuteronomy 12:5).
The Old Testament physical practices always point to the New Testament spiritual practices:
Go to THE place the Lord will choose (v. 26).
The exclusivity focus is on the Person not the place or the practice.
Jesus said, “Not here or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth” (John 4:20-24). And He made clear that He is THE exclusive way to the Father (John 14:6).
The apostle Paul noted that the day of the week or the type of food doesn’t matter in our worship practices; THE focus on Jesus is what matters (Romans 14).
So worship of God is both prescribed and personal:
Paul went on to say in Romans 14 that we shouldn’t judge the sincerity of another person’s worship. If they are glorifying God—great! If not—they will have to stand before THE Judge.
We only have access to God through THE High Priest Jesus Christ. Let us always make sure that He is THE focus.
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