I read something really cool in my personal devotional time this morning, and I took to Periscope to share it live. (Are you on Periscope yet? Check it out, and please consider following me at @craigtowens.)
Please take a look at the well-known stories in Luke 8, and then listen to what the Holy Spirit was showing me this morning about F.E.A.R. = False Evidence Appearing Real. The verse I really focus on is Luke 8:37.
“Why did Saul obey the people instead of God? Because he feared the people instead of God. He feared the human consequences of obedience more than he feared the divine consequences of sin. He feared the displeasure of the people more than the displeasure of God. And that is a great insult to God. … To turn from Him out of fear of what man can do is to discount all that God promises to be for those who fear Him It is a great insult. And in such an insult God can take no pleasure. On the other hand when we hear the promises and trust Him with courage, fearing the reproach brought upon God by our unbelief, then He is greatly honored. And in that He has pleasure.” —John Piper
“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.” —Sir Isaac Newton
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. … We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.” —C.S. Lewis
“What, sirs, is your wisdom? Your wisdom dwells in denying what your eyes can see—a God; in denying what your consciences tell you—that you are guilty; in denying what should be your best hope, what your spirit really craves after—redemption in Christ Jesus. Your folly lies in following a perverted nature, instead of obeying the dictates of One Who points you to the right path. You are wise and you drink poison; we are fools and we take the antidote. You are wise and you hunt the shadow; we are fools and we grasp the substance. You are wise, and you labor and put your money into a bag which is full of holes, and spend it for that which is not bread, and which never gives you satisfaction; and we are fools enough to be satisfied, to be happy, to be perfectly content with heaven and God.” —Charles Spurgeon
Seth Godin says, “Those critical choices you made then, they were based on what you knew about the world as it was.” Now check out his post New Times Call For New Decisions.
J. Warner Wallace, a cold-case detective, wrote, “I’ve worked more cases involving witnesses than I can even count. A career in law enforcement will put you in direct contact with eyewitnesses on a daily basis, starting with your very first night on the job. After interviewing literally thousands of witnesses over the course of twenty five years, I think I’ve learned something about reliable eyewitness testimony.” Check out more in his post Why We Should Expect Witnesses To Disagree.
Such a sweet video from a boy with Down Syndrome to his Dad on Fathers Day. I love the ending tag line: “Love doesn’t count chromosomes”—
“When you bounce your eyes away from a sexual image, immediately pull from your memory a pure image. Maybe a wedding picture, or a vacation experience with your family, or your buddies. There are thousands of positive images you can pull from your memory within seconds to replace the sexual images you’re tempted with.” —Steve Arterburn
“satan shows the best, but hides the worst, because his best will not [counterbalance] his worst; but Christ’s will abundantly.” —Matthew Henry
William Wilberforce said something about slavery that could just as easily apply to abortion today: “It naturally suggested itself to me, how strange it was that providence, however mysterious in its ways, should so have constituted the world as to make one part of it depend on its existence for the depopulation and devastation of another.” Check out this Live Action post: Lessons From Wilberforce.
“But do you want to get better? It seems like a stupid question. Of course we want our organization, our work and our health to improve. But often, we don’t. Better means change and change means risk and risk means fear.” —Seth Godin
Our worldview makes a huge difference in the way we live. Check out this post from Stand To Reason on how Christianity improved the lives of women.
A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that the number of people in America identifying themselves as Christians has dropped. Check out the results of the survey here, and then listen to what John MacArthur has to say in this video—
Remembering our past is so important. Forgetting where we’ve come from can make us insensitive to the feelings of others, it can make us falsely proud of what we assume we’ve accomplished for ourselves, and it can make us fearful that God cannot handle what’s coming next.
So God want us to remember two things: what we were, and what we are. In Ephesians the verb tense Paul uses literally says, “Keep on calling this to mind; keep on keeping it fresh in your thoughts” (Ephesians 2:11 & 12).
Keep on remembering what you WERE:
And then come two amazing words―BUT NOW (v. 13) keep on remember what you ARE:
Constantly calling this to mind should produce three attitudes―
We are continuing our study of the Book of Ephesians this coming Sunday. Please join us!
[PHOTOS] This is amazing! Womb-Selfies: 5 Amazing Photos Of Preborn Life.
“The enemy of creativity is fear. We’re all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid. A surprising insight: an enemy of fear is creativity. Acting in a creative way generates action, and action persuades the fear to lighten up.” —Seth Godin
Super Vision: scientists are creating technologies to allow doctors to see inside you better. “It is already possible to peer inside the body with X-rays and ultrasound. But the images produced by such tools are crude compared with those that should be possible with visible light.”
Men’s Health magazine surveyed people on cheating. The results are eye-opening, and sad. It’s far better to do things God’s way!
“All that stuff you have now? You don’t get to keep it. In fact, you never had it. You’re simply a steward of what God has given you. Psalm 24:1 reminds us, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.’ Your stuff is not yours. Ever since you grabbed that toy and yelled, ‘Mine!’ you’ve been lying. Everything is God’s!” —Max Lucado
“In March 2014, the BICEP2 radio astronomy team announced purported direct evidence of cosmic inflation, an important part of the modern Big Bang model for the universe’s creation. This announcement was front-page news all over the world. However, these scientists recently submitted a paper for publication that effectively retracts their breakthrough claim, acknowledging that their earlier results were spurious. They admitted their ‘evidence’ was actually an artifact from dust within our own galaxy.” Read more in Big Bang Evidence Retracted.
Nicholas Herman took the name Brother Lawrence after his conversion to Christianity, and he wrote some amazing thoughts about prayer. Here are a few of his quotes.
“The real heart of integrity stays in place whether the test in adversity or prosperity.” —Chuck Swindoll
[VIDEO] A heartwarming story with dogs. What could be better than that?!
Here are some more quotes from Oswald Chambers’ book Notes On Ezekiel. My book review is here, and my first set of quotes from this book is here.
“We are too shallow to be afraid of God. … It requires a miracle of grace before we believe this, consequently we are foolishly fearless, but when the grace of God lifts us into the life of God we fear nothing and no one saving God alone. … Confusion arises when we do not see God as Almighty.”
“God will put us in circumstances where we have to take steps of which we do not see the meaning, only on looking back do we discern that it was God’s will for us.”
“We are always on the wrong line when we come to God with a pre-occupied mind because a pre-occupied mind springs from a disloyal heart: ‘I don’t want to do God’s will, what I want is for God to give me permission to do what I want to do.’”
“What God burns is not weakness, not imperfection, but perverted goodness.”
“Every part of our human nature which is not brought into subjection to the Holy Spirit after experiencing deliverance from sin will prove a corrupting influence.”
“We all have the sneaking idea that we are the favorites of God—‘It’s alright for me to do this, God will understand.’ If I as a child of God commit sin, I will be as sternly dealt with as if I were not His child.”
“Don’t tie God up in your own conceptions, or say too surely you know what God will do. … The sovereign purposes of God work out slowly and inexorably, but ever be careful to note where God’s sovereignty is at work among men in matters of history and Time, and where it is at work in matters of eternal destiny. Beware of allowing your memory of how God has worked to take the place of present vital moral relationship to Him.”
“When I have been using ‘the sword of the Spirit’ in a spirit of indignation against another, it is a terrible experience to find the sword suddenly wrested out of my hand and laid about me personally by God. Let your personal experience of the work of God’s Spirit instruct you at the foot of Calvary; let the light of God riddle you through, then you will never use the Word of God to another, never turn the light of God on him, without fear and trembling.”
“Liberty is the ability to obey the law of God, with the power to live according to its demands; license is the unrestrained impulse to traffic against the law of God. … The seal of immorality is that I do what I like; the seal of freedom is that I do what God likes.”
“If the Holy Spirit is obeyed the stubbornness is blown out, the dynamite of the Holy Ghost blows it out.”
“Pride in its most estimable as well as its most debased form is self-deification; it is not a yielding to temptation from without, but a distinct alteration of relationships within.”
“I may suffer because of the sins of my progenitors—I am never punished for them.”
“In dealing with Bible experiences we must ever make allowance for the miraculous, which never contradicts reason, but very often does contradict common sense. The miraculous transcends reason and lifts it into another world than the logical one, consequently spiritual experience is something I have lived through, not thought through.”
“God has done astonishing and costly things to draw us near. He has sent His Son to suffer and to die so that through Him we might draw near. It’s all so that we might draw near. And all of this is for our joy and for His glory.” —John Piper
“The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.” —C.S. Lewis
Detroit Tiger fans know that Alan Trammell should be in the MLB Hall of Fame.
Chilly Chilton has a deathwish, and you should read about it.
“Your business is to go and ‘tell to sinners round what a dear Savior you have found’, for that is God’s way of using you to complete the unity of His Church.” —Charles Spurgeon
“The most important thing a church can have going for it is strong, biblical preaching. It can do with or without an app, a Facebook page, a glitzy web site, streaming sermons, online giving, a fancy building, free wi-fi, or a clearly defined brand. But it cannot fulfill God’s purpose without power in the pulpit.” —Mark Atteberry
“Nothing fosters courage like a clear grasp of grace. And nothing fosters fear like an ignorance of mercy.” —Max Lucado
The 112th Psalm begins with an interesting idea that almost sounds like an oxymoron: delightful fear—
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in His commands. (v. 1)
These are not contrasting ideas, but two sides of the same coin. They are completions of each other, and they are essential to a healthy relationship with Jehovah. And then, oh!, the blessings that flow from God to me!
After nine verses of these amazing blessings to the one who delightfully fears God, only one verse is left for the one who doesn’t—he is vexed, wasting away, and frustrated.
I don’t know about you, but I want to delightfully fear—worship, obey, revere and love—Jehovah my God!
Oswald Chambers has a way of writing about biblical truths that satisfy both the head and the heart. You can read my review of Chambers’ book The Love Of God by clicking here. Below are just a few of the many, many quotes I highlighted in this amazing book.
“In the future, when trial and difficulties await you, do not be fearful, whatever and whoever you may lose faith in, let not this faith slip from you—God is Love; whisper it not only to your heart in its hour of darkness, but here in your corner of God’s earth and man’s great city, live in the belief of it; preach it by your sweetened, chastened, happy life; sing it in consecrated moments of peaceful joy, sing until the world around you ‘is wrought to sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.’ The world does not bid you sing, but God does. Song is the sign of an unburdened heart; then sing your songs of love unbidden, ever rising higher and higher into a fuller conception of the greatest, grandest fact on the stage of Time—God is Love.”
“God did not create man as a puppet to please a despotic idea of His own, He created us out of the superabundant flow of overflowing love and goodness, He created us susceptible of all the blessedness which He had ordained for us.”
“Drink deep and full of the love of God and you will not demand the impossible from earth’s loves, and the love of wife and child, of husband and friend, will grow holier and healthier and simpler and grander.”
“Love is difficult to define, but the working definition I would like to give is that ‘Love is the sovereign preference of my person for another person, embracing everyone and everything in that preference.’”
“The majority of us are unnoticed and unnoticeable people. If we take the extraordinary experience as a model for the Christian life, we erect a wrong standard without knowing it.”
“God will use any number of extraordinary things to chisel the detail of His ‘lily work’ in His children. He will use people who are like hedgehogs, He will use difficult circumstances, the weather; He will use anything and everything, no matter what it is, and we shall always know when God is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.”
“A Christian is one in whom the indwelling Spirit of God shines out all the time.”
“Our Lord did not say to His disciples: ‘I have had a most successful time on earth, I have addressed thousands of people and been the means of their salvation; now you go and do the same kind of thing.’ He said: ‘If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; you also ought to wash one another’s feet.’ We try to get out of it by washing the feet of those who are not of our own set. We will wash the heathen’s feet, the feet in the slums; but fancy washing my brother’s feet! my wife’s! my husband’s! the feet of the minister of my church! Our Lord said one another’s feet. It is in the ordinary commonplace circumstances that the unconscious light of God is seen.”
“The reason we are going through the things we are is that God wants to know whether He can make us good bread with which to feed others. The stuff of our lives, not simply of our talk, is to be the nutriment of those who know us. … It is in the solitary life that we prove whether we are willing to be made the unadvertised life for the community to which we belong—whether we are willing to be made bread or to be simply the advertisement for bread? If we are to be made bread, then we must not be surprised if we are treated in the way Our Lord was treated.”
“For a man to lay down his life is not to lay it down in a sudden crisis, such as death, but to lay it down in deliberate expenditure as one would lay out a pound note. Not—‘Here it is, take it out in one huge martyrdom and be done with it.’ It is a continual substitution whereby we realize that we have another day to spend out for Jesus Christ, another opportunity to prove ourselves His friends.”
“The test of spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, there is something wrong. … Spiritual selfishness makes us want to stay on the mount; we feel so good, as if we could do anything—talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay there. But there must be the power to descend; the mountain is not the place for us to live, we were built for the valleys. … We never live for the glory of God on the mount, we see His glory there, but we do not live for His glory there; it is in the valley that we live for the glory of God. … The reason we have to live in the valley is that the majority of people live there, and if we are to be of use to God in the world we must be useful from God’s standpoint, not from our own standpoint or the standpoint of other people. … As disciples of Jesus we have to learn not only what Our Lord is like on the Mount of Transfiguration, but what He is like in the valley of humiliation, where everything is giving the lie to His power, where the disciples are powerless, and where He is not doing anything.”
“We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.”
A.W. Tozer shows how important the Holy Spirit is in bringing us into a deeper relationship with the fullness of the Godhead in his book God’s Pursuit Of Man. Check out some quotes on this subject.
“One of the most telling blows which the enemy ever struck at the life of the Church was to create in her a fear of the Holy Spirit.”
“The true Christian ideal is not to be happy but to be holy. The holy heart alone can be the habitation of the Holy Ghost.”
“For the Holy Spirit is not a luxury, not something added now and again to produce a deluxe type of Christian once in a generation. No, He is for every child of God a vital necessity, and that He fill and indwell His people is more than a languid hope. It is rather an inescapable imperative.”
“God will not surprise a doubting heart with an effusion of the Holy Spirit, nor will He fill anyone who has doctrinal questions about the possibility of being filled.”
“If the Spirit takes charge of your life He will expect unquestioning obedience in everything. He will not tolerate in you the self-sins even though they are permitted and excused by most Christians. By the self-sins I mean self-love, self-pity, self-seeking, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement, self-defense.”
“However wonderful the crisis experience of being filled with the Spirit, we should remember that it is only a means toward something greater: that greater thing is the lifelong walk in the Spirit, indwelt, directed, taught and empowered by His mighty Person.”
“We must make our thoughts a clean sanctuary for His holy habitation. He dwells in our thoughts, and soiled thoughts are as repugnant to Him as soiled linen to a king.”
“The Spirit indwelt life is not a special deluxe edition of Christianity to be enjoyed by a certain rare and privileged few who happen to be made of finer and more sensitive stuff than the rest. Rather, it is the normal state for every redeemed man and woman the world over.”
You can read some other quotes from this book by clicking here.
You can read my review of God’s Pursuit Of Man by clicking here.
Craig T. Owens 