PEOPLE OF FAITH MUST BE CONSIDERED A THREAT

If our faith is to have meaning at all, we must understand our purpose as making a critical difference in the world. As people of faith we should be considered dangerous and a threat to every system and instrument of injustice, destruction, and human alienation.

Whenever and wherever efforts are forged to divide humanity and wage war, we should be driven to declare God’s will. We are called to remind the powers-that-be that we are divinely ordained to live in peace with justice for all; we are called to be makers of peace.

In order to have courage to take bold, unpopular positions, we need a well-developed practice of prayer.

In order to act appropriately and not just emotionally, we need a clear line of communication with God. Prayer makes the difference when disaster is imminent.

We are on a collision course with unthinkable consequences. We need prayer.

Today, we need prayer because so much of the world has turned a deaf ear to life and hope. Violence is rampant and national leadership is flawed. We need to turn the world around. We need to turn the world upside down.

 

 

Today, I am praying for courage and greater compassion. I pray to be peace in the face of loud, rampant shouts for war and violence. I pray to faithfully and obediently follow the Word of God; to bring hope and healing. I am praying for new global leadership that is compassionate and has vision. And, I pray that we will be a more humble people, who confess our sins, pray, seek God’s face, and turn away from wickedness, so that God’s promise to Solomon will be fulfilled in our time; that God will hear our prayers, forgive our mistakes, and heal our land.

 

In the Bonds of Calvary,

 

 

IT MEANS WE LIVE UNDER HIS LOVE

John B. Gough once told of sitting in a church service one Sunday morning and hearing a hoarse, discordant voice singing behind him. The voice was so bad that he truly felt sorry for its owner. The closing hymn was, “Just As I AM, Without One Plea” and Gough cringed as he listened to the grating voice without much hint of melody or much tune.

Between the first and second stanzas the organist mercifully played an interlude. While the interlude was being played, Gough felt a touch on his arm and the man behind him whispered, “Could you please tell me the first few words of the second verse. I believe I could pick up the rest if I knew how the verse began.” John Gough whispered back, “Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind…..” As he turned back to whisper the words, Gough looked into the face of the man with the awful voice and saw that he was blind.

And when he heard him with his grating voice trying to sing the next lines, “Sight, riches, healing of the mind Yea all I need in Thee to find, O Lamb of God I come.” Gough said that he would like to lend him what voice he had, and help him sing if he could.

“And so God feels toward us when we try to serve Him. He would help us in our failures….and, unlike Gough; He is able to do it. We have within our grasp the ability to become what God desires for us to be.

I am tired of the inferior and the substitute. His Lordship…His Leadership….His Love, is mine.

Why would I settle for anything less?

In the Bonds of Calvary,

Blessed Assurance

We don’t have much assurance in our world today. We have a spiraling inflation….an out of control economy…. Social security and health care are questionable. Promises that are made by world leaders seem to fade away with the same breath that they are spoken. We have come to a point that we start out not believing what political leaders are saying because they have failed us so many times. But….The things that God promises us we can be assured of. God’s promises are both sure and steadfast.

Today I am assured of His PRESENCE

Today I am assured of His PROTECTION

Today I am assured of His PROVISION

And while I am absolutely thankful for those assurances, I am extremely happy that today I am assured of His Peace.

I have peace in Him today….and I want and need that every day.

In the Bonds of Calvary,

I Want The Mantle

If you want the mantle, you have to be there when it falls.

This is to say that God’s fullest power is granted to those most determined to be a part of what God is doing.

I want in on what God is doing. The activity of God’s Spirit is life-changing, shaking us up, like the whirlwind in Elijah’s life. Things get all turned around in a whirlwind.

Old traditions are ripped away

People’s priorities are rearranged

Old methods become obsolete

Interests change

Life-styles are transformed

Behavior is altered

Life-goals are reversed

Attitudes are affected
Loyalties are shifted
Interpersonal relationships are affected. All of which will require life adjustments

 

So, the question seems to be how far am I willing to go in order to be a part of all God wants to do in my world?

  Just how much do I want God’s power?

  How obedient am I willing to be?

  How sacrificial am I willing to be?

 

I am asking myself this question: “Am I really willing to do everything God asks?” The degree of my obedience will always equal the degree of my empowering. It all depends upon just how much I am willing for God to do through me.

 

If we want the mantle, we must be there when it falls. This necessitates obedience: “The Holy Spirit… is given by God to all that obey Him.”

 

God’s power will flow through those who stay where the action is, and through those who burn  with a desperate desire to do His will.

 

And that’s what I want today….more than ever before.

 

In the Bonds of Calvary,

Have you been disappointed with yourself?

Like most believers, I strive to live a positive productive life but sometimes reach a point where I am disappointed with myself in one respect or another. Although I am living a “Blessed Life”, there is disappointment, not in a friend or a co-worker, or in a situation that failed, but disappointment in myself.

I experience self disappointment whenever I fail to do that which I think I should do in the way that I should do it.

Dealing with self disappointment becomes a private war, an internal struggle that is not seen by others but is felt very strongly by myself every time I measure where God wants me to be and where I really am.

Unless I tell somebody, other than God, the only one who knows is that man in the mirror. That man in the mirror reminds me of what I promised to be and what I am actually doing about that promise. The face that keeps changing in the mirror, keeps pointing out the size of the gap between my ideals and reality, and that disppoints me.

 

In the Bonds of Calvary,

When trouble comes

When trouble comes into my life…..and it often does………..I can do one of three things:

• Endure it
• Escape it or
• Enlist it.

 I have noticed that if I only endure my trials then they become my masters and I have a tendency to become hard and bitter.

If I try to escape my trials then I will probably miss the purposes God wants to achieve in my life.

 But if I can just learn to enlist them, they will become my servants and work for me to bring about my growth in Christ.

That’s what I want to do….everyday….all the time.

Ro. 8:28, “…All things…”

In The Bonds of Calvary,

 

I AM STABLE

I asked my Oncologist today if she was ready to change my status from PR (Partial Remission)  to something else. I felt like it was time for a change of terminology since this one(PR) had been around for several months. The report today was that there was more shrinkage and no evidence of any growth. This time they had done a complete body scan (not only the area where the tumor is) and found nothing that would cause additional concern.

I suppose I was pressing for a new status terminology and she responded by telling me that I was “Stable”.  That’s my new status , “Stable”. I like it better than PR but not as well as what the future status will be.

I am not scheduled to go back for another doctors visit for three months and I was cleared to go on the missions trip to Guatemala on March 7th.

Praise the Lord….I am Stable.

 

In the Bonds of Calvary,

“God wants me to have a Testimony!”

How will I get a testimony that will make a difference?

God will give me a Testimony when I love Him more than I love life.

God will give me a Testimony when He is more important than life.

God will give me a Testimony when He is more important than sleep. God will give me a Testimony when He is more important than food.

God will give me a Testimony when He is more important than my wishes.

Hold on…just a minute here. I better look up the definition: Testimony is evidence that is given verbally in a court of Law to prove or disprove a point.

Am I on trial? I sure am….we all are!

Testimony is a remembering of past events that proves to the court of public opinion that something has happened.

Something has happened in my life.

I could have been lost but Jesus saved me.

I could be dead, but Jesus spared me.

I could be down, but Jesus lifted me up.

God wants me to have a Testimony. And I have one! God has been so good to me that I have no choice but to have a Testimony.

In the Bonds of Calvary,