Early Light Devotional - In Touch Ministries - Dr. Charles Stanley 2010

Early Light Devotional - In Touch Ministries - Dr. Charles Stanley 2010

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Suffering...

	YE ARE NOT YOUR OWN
"Know ye not that . . ye are not your own?" 1 Corinthians 6:19 There is no such thing as a private life - "a world within the world" - for a man or woman who is brought into fellowship with Jesus Christ's sufferings. God breaks up the private life of His saints, and makes it a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and for Himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for ourselves, we are called into the fellowship of the Gospel, and things happen which have nothing to do with us, God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way, if you do not, instead of being of the slightest use to God in His Redemptive work in the world, you will be a hindrance and a clog. The first thing God does with us is to get us based on rugged Reality until we do not care what becomes of us individually as long as He gets His way for the purpose of His Redemption. Why shouldn't we go through heartbreaks? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us fall and collapse at the first grip of pain; we sit down on the threshold of God's purpose and die away of self-pity, and all so called Christian sympathy will aid us to our death bed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, and says - "Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine." If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.

Oswald Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest

Content.....

Be content to live unknown for a little while, and to walk your weary way through the fields of poverty, or up the hills of affliction; for by-and-by you shall reign with Christ, for He has "made us kings and priests unto God, and we shall reign for ever and ever." 

C.H. Spurgeon

On a mission....

Two members of our church family are currently in Vietnam. Please take a minute to say a prayer for them. Here is a link to the blog if you'd like to follow along. Going Back With God

Be on guard against false teaching.....

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” says the LORD.
Jeremiah 23:1 NKJV

No minor details...

April 15th.
	THE RELAPSE OF CONCENTRATION
"But the high places were not taken away out of Israel; nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days." 2 Chronicles 15:17 Asa was incomplete in his external obedience, he was right in the main but not entirely right. Beware of the thing of which you say - "Oh, that does not matter much." The fact that it does not matter much to you may mean that it matters a very great deal to God. Nothing is a light matter with a child of God. How much longer are some of us going to keep God trying to teach us one thing? He never loses patience. You say - "I know I am right with God"; but still the "high places" remain, there is something over which you have not obeyed. Are you protesting that your heart is right with God, and yet is there something in your life about which He has caused you to doubt? Whenever there is doubt, quit immediately, no matter what it is. Nothing is a mere detail. Are there some things in connection with your bodily life, your intellectual life, upon which you are not concentrating at all? You are all right in the main but you are slipshod; there is a relapse on the line of concentration. You no more need a holiday from spiritual concentration than your heart needs a holiday from beating. You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely His, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to "clear the numberless ascensions" in about two minutes. Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest

Judge not....

The First Stone

April 10, 2010

 

"For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not." (Ecclesiastes 7:20)

 

When the self-righteous men in the crowd surrounding the woman caught in the act of adultery were about to stone the woman (apparently indifferent to the man with whom she had been caught!), the Lord Jesus turned them all away with His suggestion that the privilege of casting the first stone should go to one who was without sin of his own (John 8:7). They realized that He knew the condition of their sinful hearts, and "being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one" (John 8:9).

 

This incident is a perpetual reminder that "the Father . . . hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22), not to any one of us. We are not qualified to judge others, since we ourselves are also sinners--saved sinners, perhaps, but sinners.

 

One of the most certain doctrines of Scripture is the universality of sin in human experience. "There is none that doeth good, no, not one," the Scripture says (Romans 3:12). "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). "The Scripture hath concluded all under sin" (Galatians 3:22). "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10). These and many other Scriptures tell us clearly that, while we urgently need to judge sin in ourselves, we are not qualified to condemn others, at least not on a personal level.

 

Only the Lord Jesus Christ, being Himself sinless (1 Peter 2:22), can judge a sinner. Thus it is only He who could be made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and thereby forgive sins and bring salvation. HMM
 
Days of Praise
Institute for Creation Research