Today I would just like to share a link to a free Kindle book for the month of July 2014. The topic of this book is how to share the gospel using the book of John as your source. Click on the image below to grab your free copy. Enjoy!
Jesus the Evangelist by Richard D. Phillips
I originally posted this on my Facebook years ago but recently stumbled upon it again and thought I should share it. This is a slightly adapted version of the poem authored by Charles C. Finn
Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear,
For I wear a mask, I wear a thousand masks,
Masks that I am afraid to take off,
But none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature to me.
But don’t be fooled
I give you the impression that I am secure,
That all is sunny and unruffled with me,
Within as well as without,
That confidence is my name and coolness is my game,
That the water’s calm and I am in command,
And that I need no one.
Don’t believe me, please!
My surface may be smooth,
But my surface is my mask,
My varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies the real me,
In confusion and fear,
In loneliness.
I idly chatter with you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
Of what’s crying within me.
So, when I’m going through my routine,
Please don’t be fooled by what I’m not saying,
And what I’d like to be able to say,
But what I can’t say.
Only you can call me into aliveness,
Each time you’re kind and gentle and encouraging.
Each time you try to understand because you really care,
My heart begins to grow wings,
Very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings.
With your sensitivity and sympathy and your powers
of understanding,
You can breathe life into me, I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
How you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to.
Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
My long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me, the blinder I may strike back.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls.
In this lies my hope,
My only hope.
Who am I, you may wonder,
I am someone you know very well-
I am a hurting member of your family,
I am the person sitting beside you in this room,
I am every person you meet on the street.
Please don’t believe my mask,
Please come behind it to glimpse the real me.
Please speak to me, share a little of yourself with me,
At least recognize me.
Please.
Because you care.
Now, I can’t remember what motivated me to post this all those years ago but what motivated me to share it again is just that it reminds me how superficial we all are in our relationship’s. Today as you go about your business you will undoubtedly hear the question “How are you?” to which we all normally respond “I’m good thanks” and carry on with the day. Just think about it, if you asked someone that and they proceeded to tell you about all their problems you would be caught off guard and if you answered truthfully you would most likely receive strange looks as well. We don’t really care about the answer, we just ask it because it is the norm. This poem speaks to the artificial mask that we all present. Yes we all play this game with masks. No it is not just you trying to pretend and act like everything is ok. If we are honest. Deep down we all worry. We all have issues, pain. It is time we recognize that and approach each other with this in mind. Let us lift each other up. Let us put in the effort in to relationships we have with other and help each other.
If birds could talk about us what would they say? Click the link below to find out.
We recently heard a sermon at out church about drifting away from the faith and this song immediately sprang to mind. Christian, be careful when you think you stand strong lest you fall (1 Cor 10:12).
Do not flirt with sin. You do not become spiritually bankrupt over night it is a slow process. Keep watch for spiritual erosion, stay faithful to your local church body and devotions. Should you want to hear a excellent sermon on this topic you can download one here for free.
I believe in God the Father; self-existent and eternal; infinite in all His ways, without height and without width and without depth; creator and ruler; transcendent, yet imminent; terrifying, yet lovely; slow to anger and rich in mercy; rightful judge of all the earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God; fully God and by his incarnation, fully man; the last Adam; crucified, dead and buried for the sins of his people; risen bodily from the dead for the hope and future glory of his people and all creation; ascended to the Father’s side to make intercession for his people; coming back to defeat all enemies, the last being death.
I believe in God the Holy Spirit; eternal and personal; writer of the Scriptures; the one who convicts of sin; regenerator of hearts; the one who sanctifies his people; seal and guarantee of all the riches of…
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“Writing can be magic, if you give yourself time, because you can produce in the mind of some other person, distant from you in space or even time, an image of the ideas that exist in only your mind at this one instant.”
– Michael C. Munger
“Because he loved us, he came after us in Christ. He pursued us even to the desolate anguish of the cross, where he bore our sin, guilt, judgment and death. It takes a hard and stony heart to remain unmoved by love like that. It is more than love. Its proper name is ‘grace,’ which is love to the undeserving.
—John Stott
My aim for this article is to encourage the children of God, of the providence of God and to be patient in the Lord’s perfect timing.
“ And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
Many of us know this verse quite well, we use it to encourage one another all the time… But do we really believe it in our hearts or is it just head knowledge? Do we live like we believe it? Do we really believe that good is going to come out of every circumstance we are in?… How much do you believe this verse?
Something that I’m struggling with at the moment, is been content with God’s timing in my life. I become discontent with what God has so graciously given to me because I have something else in mind. I fail to see God’s perfection in His timing and His infinite wisdom. I seem to think that I know better?!
But how foolish is that? Shouldn’t we be so thrilled that the Almighty God is in control of our lives? Shouldn’t we be comforted in knowing that the God who created this beautiful and majestic universe is the same God who knows my future?
Let’s pause for a moment, and reflect on God’s wisdom and power…
“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” Luke 12:24
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16
If you are a child of God, you can trust in His promises. The Lord loves His children and has their good in mind. HE KNOWS BEST. It’s time we humble ourselves to acknowledge the fact that we are not omniscient and that the plans we make for ourselves are not always going to be what God has planned. Let us not wish for something better. Or become discontent with the circumstances we are in… God knows what He is doing… and remember, there is a time for everything… we all walk through life at different paces.. we all find life partners at different times, we all get married at different times (some may not get married at all), we all finish our studies at different times (some may not even study), we all pass our drivers license at different times ( some people pass the 1st time, others take 3 times). My point is, we need to realise that God gives us all different circumstances and his timing is different for everyone. He doesn’t withhold something from us because he wants to torture us and see how long we can endure. He does it cause He knows what’s best. God know’s things that we don’t. And we need to trust in His provision.
“ For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil–this is God’s gift to man.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
“The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.” Psalm 111:7
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that it is wrong to have certain wants and desires for your life. We just need to guard from wanting something so much that we become discontent with what God has given us now. We need to be careful not to focus so much on the future that we fail to enjoy and be satisfied in God’s present provision.
Our responsibility is commit our lives to the Lord;
“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.” Psalm 37:5
to follow under his headship and honour Him in everything we do. The Lord promises us, that if we delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts (Psalms 37:4)
So, let us be fervent in prayer about this issue… Let us trust the Lord with our lives and pray to be content in His provision and His timing… after all, He is the great, awesome and majestic God, and we are puny, sinful, little humans in comparison. If you had a choice between the two of who gets to be in control of your life, who would you choose?
-Selaysha
Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!, Yes this is from Macbeth. But such a cry resonates within us all I’m sure. For those of you who aren’t well versed in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and are curious Google it. You might find the following site helpful.
But for now allow me to paint the picture for you. It’s a story about murder. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth conspire to overthrow the crown, they kill King Duncan but even though they get away with it Lady Macbeth is unsettled, her conscience bothers her. The guilt slowly affects her and drives her insane and even to suicide. The guilt comes out in Act 5, scene 1, she begins sleep walking, dreaming about the night of the murder. For 15 minutes she tries to wash Duncan’s blood off of her hands, “Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!”… Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Of course there is no real blood on her hands. But in her heart they are still bloodstained, they just won’t come clean! She knows she is wrong for what she has done, oh the guilt of it stains her still! This feeling of guilt is what in some way we can identify with. Yes I’m sure none of you reading this has ever killed someone to take over the kingdom, but there are things we have done that make you cry out ‘Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!’ when you think of it. I personally know this to be true, I have stared at my ‘blood-stained hands’ in utter shock of my actions and thoughts. Guilt is something that, if we could, we would wish away, right? Wrong.
In truth feeling guilty is unpleasant. But it’s something to be thankful for! Why? because it points us in the right direction. Our conscience yells “Out Spot, Out”, because there is something we need to stop. Feeling guilty is not the problem, the problem is we are doing something that makes us guilty. The feeling is our God-given alarm system to stop doing it. Praise God for conscience and conviction because they bring us back to the right path! The path which we should be walking. I believe if we did not have this sense of right and wrong our world would be in utter chaos, the stats on murders, rape and theft would be immeasurable! But it’s because we know right and wrong that it is not so. On a personal plane we should be thankful that we have a conscience to protect ourselves from ourselves, if we didn’t I think the consequences would be dire.
Theref0re oh Christian when you hear the cry of your conscience, embrace conviction and come back to the right path. When we feel guilty for something we have done it is to Christ that we must look. Yes, that is what this blog about. That is what Paul says in Rom 7:19, he recognizes in himself this battle with his conscience, the things he wants to do he doesn’t do but the things he doesn’t want to do he finds himself doing. He is remorseful (feels guilt) over his actions just as Lady Macbeth does above and he cries out it in Rom 7:24 “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”. But then he shows us the answer…
Rom 7:25 “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!…” Jesus Christ is the answer to our guilt. That last sentence is the most important one you could ever read. Jesus Christ is the answer to our guilt! Remember this when the guilt rises up within you. If Christ is your savior your sins are paid for in their entirety. When you feel like Lady Macbeth. When you’re in despair over your sin, over your guilty deeds, past and present and you feel like crying out “Out, damn’d spot! out!” Look at Christ and hold to the truth that since He died for our sins, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” – Rom 8:1. You are guilt free because your guilt was paid for in His death. If you are His you are forgiven. Keep guilt in perspective. It serves to convict you and call you back to Christ’s Lordship, head its call! Dear Christian, focus on our savior and not your sin, serve Him and not your sin. Amen.
– Tyron
tyrosha
Life. In Light Of Eternity. 