God Chooses Dads

God chooses DadsThis is an amazing thing God says to Abraham:

When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” (Genesis 18:16-18)

Notice some very important aspects in this passage especially for Dads.

(1) God chose Abraham to be a father. 

God doesn’t haphazardly give children to fathers; He places children in homes on purpose. God chooses Dads!

(2) God chose Abraham for a specific paternal responsibility. 

God chooses a Dad today for the same reason He chose Abraham: So that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. 

(3) Because God gave Abraham this responsibility, He revealed intimate details to him about Abraham’s household. 

God asks, “Should I hide this from Abraham?” And then answers His own question with a resounding “No!” by telling Abraham specifically what is about to happen that will affect Abraham’s household (vv. 20-21). God wants to tell you, too, what’s happening in our culture that will affect your children.

(4) Abraham used this insight wisely. 

Verse 22 tells us, “Abraham remained standing before the Lord.” Dads, there is no better place for you to be than in God’s presence. If God chose you to be your children’s Dad, and if He specifically gave those children to you, He is your best resource for help in raising God-loving children!

Billy Graham said, “Parenting is the most important responsibility most of us will ever face, and none of us does it perfectly.” But rest assured, God wants to help us do it better!

God-Devoted Fathers

Here are a couple of great quotes from Andrew Murray that I shared with our Dads (and future Dads!) at Calvary Assembly of God this morning.

God-devoted father“God seeks a people on earth to do His will. The family is the great institution for this object; a believing and God-devoted father is one of the mightiest means of grace.”

“O God, teach me to realize fully what this parental faithfulness involves that You ask of me. I would make this the one object of my family life, to train my child to serve You. By my life, by my words, by my prayers, by gentleness and love, by authority and instruction, I would lead them in the way of the Lord. Be my helper, Lord. Above all, help me to remember that You have appointed this parental training for the fulfillment of Your purposes and that You have made provision for the grace to enable me to perform it. Let my faith envision Your undertaking for me in all that I must do to raise my children to love you. I ask all this in the name of Your Son. Amen.”

Thursdays With Oswald—Contemptible Unbelief

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.

Oswald Chambers

Contemptible Unbelief 

     “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). All power is given—unto whom? To the Being who lived a humble, obscure life in Nazareth; the One who says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” If all power is given to Jesus Christ, what right have I to insult Him by worrying? If we will let these words of Jesus come into our heart, we shall soon see how contemptible our unbelief is. 

     … Will I say skeptically, “What does Jesus Christ know about my circumstances? Is His power and understanding sufficient to manage things for me?” To talk like that is the way to realize the size of our unbelief, and to see why Jesus Christ was so stern in condemning it.

From Bringing Sons Unto Glory 

I love the phrase from the old hymn—

Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer! 

When I think how All-powerful and All-loving He is, I begin to see how utterly contemptible is my unbelief and my unwillingness to take everything to Him. If all power is given to Jesus Christ, what right have I to insult Him by worrying?

Dads Are The Foundation

Dads Are The FoundationIt’s been said (and I believe it’s absolutely correct), “As the family goes, so goes the society.” But I think it’s even more important to specify, “As the father goes, so goes the family.”

Dads are vital to the success of a family.

I know that’s a lot of responsibility to place on a father. God knows it too, so He has provided unique help for Dads to help them be the solid foundation for their families and for our societies.

Please join me at Calvary Assembly of God at 10:30am this Sunday for Father’s Day 2013 as we look at the help God has given to fathers to be successful as the godly foundation for their families.

10 Quotes From “Plastic Donuts”

Plastic DonutsPlastic Donuts is a fresh look at the biblical concepts of tithing and giving offerings. You can read my full book review by clicking here. These are some of the quotes that caught my eye—

“What I didn’t realize was that my lifestyle had frozen my giving at the 10 percent level. When it came to my finances, my lifestyle had all the influence. The issue is not about my needing to sacrifice my lifestyle. The issue is about my giving a gift that is connected to my heart.”

“In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus provided instructions on giving, praying, and fasting. For each, He focused on the heart standard but did not provide an amount standard (see Matthew 6:1-18).”

“David praised God seven times a day. Daniel prayed to God three times a day. Moses fasted from food and water twice, for forty days straight. Daniel fasted twenty-one days from rich foods and wine. Where did these faith heroes get their standards? They determined them. It’s human nature to seek something that is concrete, an inviolable guideline, clear marching orders. … But let’s be honest. Are we looking for a rule to follow so we can check it off the list? Or does a strict rule help to soothe a sense of guilt and confusion? It’s always easier to follow rules than to follow a living God. The absence of rules can cause tension in determining the amount of our gifts. Shouldn’t there at least be a minimum? If not, suddenly it’s wide open. Multiple options appear.”

“God is not looking for the same gift from all His children. He wants a personal gift.”

“You may not think you have the ability to give. But if you pay attention, you’ll be surprised at just what abilities you really do have.”

“Tapping your true giving ability will require countercultural lifestyle choices—such as debt-free living or a reduction in your spending.”

“If you want to grow your faith, grow your gratitude. To grow your gratitude, take time to count your blessings.”

“No matter what your ability or inability, God can be pleased with your gift.”

“Could it be that a giving lifestyle apart from love and obedience to God is simply philanthropy?”

“In the end, it is the condition of the giver’s heart that makes the gift pleasing to God.”

God, Flowers & You

God & Flowers & You

And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, He will certainly care for you.

Matthew 6:28-30

What Are You Looking At?

LookingIn the feeding of the vast multitude, Jesus had very little in the way of natural resources: five loaves of bread and two fish. He also had the skepticism of His closest followers.

But all three synoptic gospels record a very telling phrase—Jesus looked up to heaven.

Jesus didn’t look at what He didn’t have; He looked up to His Father in heaven.

Jesus took His eyes off the limited and put them on the Limitless.

Then Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Are you looking at your poverty, or the Provider? 

Are you looking at your sickness, or the Healer?

Are you looking at the skeptics, or the Promise?

Are you looking at your confusion, or the All-Knowing?

What are you looking at?

14 Quotes From “Smith Wigglesworth On Healing”

Wigglesworth HealingI hope these quotes from Smith Wigglesworth On Healing will excite you to read this book. If you’d like to read my book review, please click here.

“Never listen to human plans. God can work mightily when you persist in believing Him in spite of discouragement from the human standpoint. … I am moved by what I believe. I know this: no man looks at the circumstances if he believes.”  

“There are times when there seems to be a stone wall in front of us. There are times when there are no feelings. There are times when everything seems as black as midnight, and there is nothing left by confidence in God. What you must do is have the devotion and confidence to believe that He will not fail, and cannot fail. You will never get anywhere if you depend on your feelings. There is something a thousand times better than feelings, and it is the powerful Word of God. There is a divine revelation within you that came when you were born from above, and this is real faith. To be born into the new kingdom is to be born into a new faith.”

“You must be yielded to the Word of God. The Word will work out love in our hearts, and when practical love is in our hearts, there is no room to boast about ourselves. We see ourselves as nothing when we get lost in this divine love.”

“You can never pray ‘the prayer of faith’ (James 5:15) if you look at the person who is needing it; there is only one place to look, and that is to Jesus.”

“Hard things are always opportunities to gain more glory for the Lord as He manifests His power. Every trial is a blessing. … The hardest things are just lifting places into the grace of God.”

“The Master does not want us to reason things out, for carnal reasoning will always land us in a bog of unbelief. He wants us simply to obey.”

“You must come to see how wonderful you are in God and how helpless you are in yourself.”

“May God help us to see this truth. We cannot be ‘to the praise of His glory’ (Ephesians 1:12) until we are ready for trials and are able to triumph in them.”

“God is never tightfisted with any of His blessings.”

“Jesus was manifested in the flesh to destroy the power of the devil (1 John 3:8). What does that mean? It means this: He is God’s example to show us that what God did for and in Jesus, He can do for and in us.”

“The reason the world is not seeing Jesus is that Christian people are not filled with Jesus. They are satisfied with attending meetings weekly, reading the Bible occasionally, and praying sometimes. … It is an awful thing for me to see people who profess to be Christians lifeless, powerless, and in a place where their lives are so parallel to unbelievers’ lives that it is difficult to tell which place they are in, whether in the flesh or in the Spirit.”

“There is no such thing as the Lord’s not meeting your need. There are no ifs or mays; His promises are all shalls. ‘All things are possible to him who believes’ (Mark 9:23).”

“Faith is just the open door through which the Lord comes. Do not say, ‘I was saved by faith’ or ‘I was healed by faith.’ Faith does not save and heal. God saves and heals through that open door. You believe, and the power of Christ comes.” 

“I clearly see that we ought to have spiritual giants in the earth, mighty in understanding, amazing in activity, always having a wonderful testimony because of their faith-filled activity. I find instead that there are many people who perhaps have better discernment than the average believer, better knowledge of the Word the the average believer, but they have failed to put their discernment and knowledge into practice, so the gifts lie dormant.”

Don’t Settle

C.S. Lewis at his deskI shared this quote with Calvary Assembly of God this morning to remind us that we shouldn’t settle. God wants us to pray BIG and to pray LONG. He wants us to claim His promises. He wants to be glorified by answering our prayers.

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures…like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” —C.S. Lewis

Tapping Into God’s Blessings

Do you want God’s blessing on your life?

Good news: God wants to bless you! He is glorified when those who love Him are living a full, blessed life.

Better news: God not only blesses us, but He also provides the means for us to tap into His blessing. His Holy Spirit is constantly calling us into the place of obedience where God can bless us.

Check out these words from the Bible—

The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey His voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. (Deuteronomy 30:10)

To tap into God’s blessing, there is the conditional IF: if we obey, and if we turn to Him exclusively. That’s the good news. But the better news is that obeying Him and turning to Him is not too hard for us. Look at what the very next verses say—

This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, “Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?” It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, “Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey? No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it. (30:11-14)

What are you waiting for? Tap into God’s blessings today!