Some good reading from today…
Here is something scientists have completely overlooked before: microbes on the ocean floor that eat the “greenhouse gas” methane.
I like this from Thom Rainer: 7 reasons why church leaders should practice fasting.
Tim Elmore always finds great ways to encourage teachers and parents in working with young people: 8 lessons about leading kids from Derek Jeter’s dad.
Chuck Colson has a fascinating commentary: Judaism’s Sexual Revolution.
Some good reading & watching from today…
“The true measure of ministry effectiveness is the extent to which we are able to lead God’s people into greater love for Him and His Kingdom.” —T.M. Moore
“Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.” —Brennan Manning
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.” —Mother Teresa
“Holiness is not the luxury of the few; it is a simple duty, for you and for me.” —Mother Teresa
“The devil does not need to bother about us as long as we remain ignorant of the way God has made us and refuse to discipline ourselves; inattention and our own slovenliness will soon run away with every power we have.” —Oswald Chambers
“There is something which we can do which God does. He does good to all His creatures, and we can do good also. He bears witness to His Son Jesus, and we can bear witness too.” —Charles Spurgeon
[VIDEO] Ken Davis always cracks me up. Check out this clip Arm Vs. Airbag.
Why do people get so annoyed over anything that looks “religious” to them. For people who claim God doesn’t exist, atheists get awfully mad at Him!
Some great reading and watching from today…
[VIDEO] Thanks to my friend Rich for telling me about the friendliest restaurant in America.
“No state is so blessed as that wherein one is free from sin, is filled with innocence, and is fully supplied with the grace of God.” —Ambrose
[VIDEO] John Maxwell has a good reminder about the power of personal discipline.
There are few who can express the love of God as Charles Spurgeon in The Glorious Love Of The Father.
Tim Elmore shares some counter-intuitive thinking for preparing our kids for success.
“If you want to hear from Heaven you must seek it on your knees.” —D.L. Moody
“Don’t be forced into this false dichotomy. Truth and love are not at odds. Rather, for the sake of love, cherish the truth. Let this love for truth and truth for love govern the use of language….” —John Piper
“Who will grant me to find peace in You? Who will grant me this grace, that You would come into my heart and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace You my only good?” —Augustine
Don’t buy into it when Islam is called a religion of peace: ISIS terrorists targeting Christians in Iraq.
Some good reading from today…
“We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased.’ To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable.” —C.S. Lewis
“Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.” —Watchman Nee
Chick-Fil-A closed for a very honorable reason.
A bit scary: Muslims’ attitude toward non-Muslims.
“It’s easy, and perhaps comforting, to think of all the things the church is doing to try to change the world. But the real question is, what are you doing? Sure, you go to church and try to live a good life. But how intentional are you when it comes to actually impacting the lives of the lost people you rub shoulders with every day?” —Mark Atteberry
“Whatever the currents of public opinion and governmental action, God’s message is constant and glorious. Whether it is a crime to defy Scripture or to defend it, the Church must preach it—both in season and out of season. This is her calling.” —Kairos Journal
What a fascinating book Watchman Nee wrote in The Ministry Of God’s Word. In fact, it’s one of the rare books that I called a must read for pastors (you can read my book review by clicking here). To whet your appetite I’ve been sharing some quotes from this book.
“This is an enormous task, a task which far surpasses human ability. Every servant of God must realize his incompetency. He should prostrate himself before God, knowing how incompetent he is in supplying Christ, even though he may be well able to speak on the doctrines or teachings of the Bible. Let us look to God’s mercy today. We need to reevaluate everything. We must see how absolutely useless we are. We are utterly helpless without His mercy. To be a minister of the Word is too serious a matter to be taken lightly. It is not an easy task which can be fulfilled just by reading the Bible so many times. A minister of the Word must be able to supply Christ and help people to touch Christ by his words.”
“To obtain a pure minister of the Word God has to so work in a person that his outward man is broken. Hence it is necessary for a minister of the Word to accept the discipline and control of God; otherwise he will surely destroy God’s Word by the mingling in of his own undealt flesh. … The Holy Spirit has been able to work to such a depth that when that man stands to speak, people hear the Lord speaking.”
“Ministry requires our seeing something before God and in freshness presenting this thing to the church. … Each time I minister I need to receive special revelation for the occasion. … Continuous revelation begets continual ministry.”
“The same message with the same delivery may not produce the same result; only the same anointing will.”
“God never intends to give us small revelations. If He grants revelation, His revelation is big; its scope and content is rich. How can anything inglorious come forth from the God of glory? The normal portion God gives man is a cup running over. God is forever rich, great, and all-inclusive.”
“Man’s mental strength acts like his physical strength. If his arm can only lift fifty pounds of weight, then he cannot handle anything heavier, not even one additional pound. So is our mental strength limited. If we exhaust its energy on other things we will have nothing left with which to spend on the things of God; and hence we will not be able to translate God’s light into thought.”
“In the things spiritual, natural eloquence is useless. God must give words. … Hence we must wait on God and read the Bible, asking Him to grant us the words. When the words do come, we are instantly assured of what we should speak today. … The greater the lack of revealed words the longer should be the waiting before God. Pray, commune, wait, and lay the Bible before God. This is not an ordinary waiting, nor ordinary prayer and communion. This is waiting before God with the Bible, praying to God with the Bible, and communing with God over the Bible.”
You can read the other quotes I’ve posted by clicking here, here, here, and here.
“Accept these [euphoric] sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.” —C.S. Lewis
“Discipline motivates—Punishment mortifies.
Discipline is based on trust—Punishment is based on fear.
Discipline is time in—Punishment is time out.
Discipline is practice—Punishment is penalty.” Read more from Ken Davis in his post The Power Of The D Word.
“Before you go anywhere else with your disappointments, go to God. Maybe you don’t want to trouble Him with your hurts. ‘He’s got famines and wars; He won’t care about my little struggles,’ you think. Why don’t you let Him decide that? He cared enough about a wedding to provide the wine. He cared enough about Peter’s tax payment to give him a coin. He cared enough about the woman at the well to give her answers. He cares about you! Your first step is to go to the right person. Go to God.” —Max Lucado
Brian Thomas asks, “Has evolutionary faith blinded biologists from seeing the forensic clues within the insect symbiosis they study?” in his post about the beauty and elegance of Creation shown in symbiosis.
[INFOGRAPHIC] How President Obama’s end-run around Congress is going to cost you money. A lot of money!
“Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known. Augustine therefore justly warns that godliness and peace of mind ought to come first if a man is to understand anything of such great matters.” —John Calvin
This 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.
Transforming Circumstances
We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.
From Conformed To His Image
God will use whatever means necessary to fashion us into the man or woman He created us to be. We must not fight against these circumstances, but view them through the lens of God’s Word.
Three years ago I posted this—
I’m going to make a statement about Dr. Tim Elmore’s book Generation iY that I rarely make: This book is a MUST READ for parents and anyone who works with youth!
Yes, a must read. The subtitle of this book is not over-dramatized, but really is an understated truth: Our last chance to save their future.
Recently Tim Elmore released in ebook format a final chapter to Generation iY. After reading this I was just as convinced that anyone who works with our youth must read this book (read my full book review by clicking here). Here are a few quotes from this chapter.
“Historical trends suggest that every time there is a population explosion among the youth (between 15-29 years old), violence follows. Sociologist Gunnar Heinson reported that countries are vulnerable when the youth population is 30 percent or higher.”
“Our assessment of 8,500 high school and college students clearly reveals a drop in:
“Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein released a report recently saying that the state of our youth is now an issue of national security. Seventy-five percent of America’s youth are not even fit for the military due to obesity, criminal records or failure to graduate high school.”
I stand by what I said: The Ministry Of God’s Word by Watchman Nee is a must read for anyone who preaches the Bible. You can read my full review of this book by clicking here. Below are some more quotes from this amazing book.
“Should anyone fail to see the necessity of having himself dealt with by God, fail to see how his habits, temperament and life need to be pruned and refined, he is of no use to the Word of God.”
“Never forget what the ministry of the Word is. It is the outflowing of the Spirit of God in man as well as in the Word. One part of it consists of God’s Word and the other part of man’s ministry. The Word of God comes to man, who adds in his ministry, and then the two flow out together. God’s Word is not delivered if it is just the Word without the human ministry.”
“Having been set apart as a minister of God’s Word from our mother’s womb, none of us can afford to be foolish before God.”
“A minister of the Word needs to rise very high before God; only then will His Word come through. The pureness of the Word released depends on the amount of discipline received before God. The more the man is broken, the purer the Word; the less that has been learned, the more corrupt its release. The ministry of the Word is based on the condition of the man before the Lord.”
“When the Holy Spirit finds it possible to put the Word in a person’s mouth because the emotion, thought, will, and spirit of that man are under His control, then there is revelation.”
“Every area of our life must therefore be dealt with by God. Always remember that to be a minister of the Word is not a cheap matter.”
“God does not put His Word in man for him to repeat verbatim. He puts His Word in man for the latter to search out with his mind. He gives light to man that man may grasp it and think on it. He places a burden in man for him to find appropriate words to express that burden. It is man who thinks, searches, and speaks; even so, God is able to acknowledge that it is in truth His very own Word.”
“If you as a person have not been pruned and refined by God, your opinion will not be dependable. Any bit of its projection will spoil the Word of God. How God has trusted you as His minister! He gives you a light and burden, and then allows you to think out and feel His Word, even permitting you to form your own opinion. He trusts you. He still works in you that all your opinion, thought and feeling will be like His. This is New Testament prophesying, New Testament ministry of the Word.”
You can read some previously posted quotes from this book by clicking here.
The Ministry Of God’s Word by Watchman Nee is a MUST READ for all pastors, preachers and evangelists. You can read my book review by clicking here. Over the next few Fridays, I’m going to share some powerful quotes from this book.
“In incarnation … the Word instead was dressed in Man; therefore it had human feeling, thought and opinion, though it remained God’s Word. … In this do we find a great principle of the Bible: that it is possible for the Word of God to be unimpaired by man’s feeling. The presence of human feeling does not necessarily ruin God’s Word; it does so only when such feeling is inadequate. Herein lies a tremendous problem. The great principle is that human elements must not be of such a nature as to hinder God’s Word.”
“God will work in man until his human elements do not damage God’s Word. … The Holy Spirit so operates in man, so controls and disciplines him, that the latter’s own elements can exist without impairing God’s Word; on the contrary, they fulfill it.”
“To be the one who delivers God’s Word we must be pruned and refined. God has to lay aside those whose human makeup contains many uncleannesses, fleshly things, and matters condemned by God. Others He has to bypass because they have never been broken before God, or their thoughts are not straightforward, or their lives are undisciplined, their necks stiff, their emotions untamed, or they have a controversy with God.”
“We need to be daily disciplined. Any defect in us will defile the Word and destroy its power. … The greatest difficulty we confront in preaching the Word is not whether the subject is proper or the phraseology correct, but whether the man is right.”
“God chooses men to be His ministers in order that His Word may carry a human flavor.”
“The Bible is not a collection of devotional articles; it is men performing or living out the Word of God.”
“God puts His Word in us that we may meditate on it, feel after it, be afflicted by it, or rejoice in it, before the Word is released by us. … Thus the ministry of the Word is not the mere delivery of sermons we memorize. We must allow the Word to come to us, to drill and to grind us, until it flows out with—yes, our personal elements in it—and yet not spoiled or corrupted in the least. The Lord wishes to use us as a channel of living water.”
Craig T. Owens 