Where Could You Go?

Text: Matthew 11:28

Living below in this old sinful world,

Hardly a comfort can afford;

Striving alone to face temptations sore,

Where could you go but to the Lord?

Where could you go, O where could you go,

Seeking a refuge for your soul?

Needing a friend to help you in the end,

Where could you go but to the Lord?

Neighbours are kind, you love them ev'ry one,

You get along in sweet accord;

But when your soul needs manna from above,

Where could you go but to the Lord?

Life here is grand with friends you love so dear,

Comfort you get from God's own Word;

Yet when you face the chilling hand of death,

Where could you go but to the Lord?

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Trials That Don't Make Sense

Text: 1 Corinthians 10:13

We all know the parable about the man who built his house on the rock. Did you ever notice that even though this man had a firm foundation in Christ that the storm still came? Being strong in the Lord does not mean trials won't come your way. Just the opposite. You'll probably have more trials that what you know to do with. What it does mean is that you won't crumble when they do come. Through years and years of experience I have come to realize that there are two types of trials. There are trials that make sense and there are trials that don't make sense. Let me explain...

For example, your car not starting in the cold, frigid temperatures of winter time makes sense. It's still a trial but it makes sense. You can understand why your car didn't start. It's the same scenario when you get laid off at work during times of economic hardship or if you get sick during the flu season. These are all trials but they make sense.

And then, my dear friend, there are trials that don't make sense. There is absolutely no reason or explanation for what you're going through but yet the trial is there. I have found out over the years that more times than not these type of trials happen when God moves and progress is made in the call that is on my life. Therefore, I have come to believe that trials that make sense happen because you are a born-again believer and trials that don't make sense happen because you have made the decision to be a servant of the Most High God.

Yes, there are trials aimed at believers and there are trials that are aimed at servants. I am here to tell you that the servant's trial is much more severe than the believer's trial. Just look what happened to Jesus and the apostle Paul.

God has moved mightily in my life and ministry in recent times and your mouth would drop open were I to tell you everything that's happened to me. The fact that I am writing you this letter today is proof that I have not crumbled under the onslaught of the enemy. No, I did not crumble and neither will you. The Bible says, "Many are called but few are chosen." The chosen few are the ones who will stand strong on the Rock of our salvation during times of tribulation and with a gut-like determination refuse to give up.

When trials that don't make sense happen to me I know immediately that the enemy is trying to hinder God's work in my life. This makes me hang on to Jesus even tighter. I have found that there is very little, if anything, you can do about trials that don't make sense. I mean, if your car don't start you can go get some jumper cables, right? Or if you're sick you can take some pills and call your doctor in the morning. But with trials that don't make sense all you can do is hold on to Jesus and weather the storm. Yes, sometimes you have to take the pain but if you don't give up God will move in a mighty way.

We know the trials are coming, don't we? Jesus said they would. But when you hang on to our Master your mega-storm will be replaced with a mega-calm. You'll have a peace that passes all understanding. And as you bask in His presence God will move. That what you set out to do will be fulfilled. People will get blessed and God will be glorified. This is what it's all about, my friend. So hang in there! Cling to Jesus and never let go. As you do, you can rest assured that He will lead you in triumph in Christ Jesus. Amen.

*** Written by Randall Brewer ***

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Living Dangerously In The Hands Of God

Text: 2 Chronicles 16:9

How easily Jesus is forgotten amid the comfort of our lives

How the flames become a flicker, and faith a brilliant disguise

Our Sundays become a holiday, they're an empty exercise

And the cost of real devotion seems so foreign to our lives

Oh, to gladly risk it all, oh to be faithful to His call

Abandoned to grace yet anchored in His love

Living dangerously in the hands of God

Our Lord He is a hiding place, His hold is strong and sure

Though the storms may rage around you, in His love you stand secure

So live like you believe it, and though your faith is prone to fail

Though you cower under trial, by His grace you shall prevail

Oh, to gladly risk it all, oh to be faithful to His call

Abandoned to grace yet anchored in His love

Living dangerously in the hands of God

There's safety in complacency, but God is calling us

Out of our comfort zone into a life of complete surrender to the cross.

To live dangerously

Is not to live recklessly but righteously.

And it is because of God's radical grace

For us that we can risk living

A life of radical obedience for Him.

You've got to walk on for the Lord He walks with us

You've got to walk on though it costs you everything

You've got to pray on

Oh, to gladly risk it all, oh to be faithful to His call

Abandoned to grace yet anchored in His love

Living dangerously in the hands of God

Living dangerously

Are you living dangerously?

Oh we ought to be living dangerously in the hands of God

*** Written by Steve Camp ***

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Contending For Holiness

TEXT: 1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-4

Key Verse: “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” (1 Corinthians 3:3)

When the head of government of a country who was visiting another nation was told of a crisis back home, he cut short his trip and returned to address the domestic challenge. It would have been cruel and heartless of him to have continued the journey while his country was engulfed with unrest. A good and caring leader or shepherd in the household of God would behave the same way.

Our text today identifies Paul the apostle as a concerned guardian. About to close his three-year ministry in Ephesus during his third missionary journey, he was told about the divisive tendencies creeping into the Church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). It was a disheartening news for Paul who had spent one and a half years with the Corinthian Church teaching the brethren the pure and undiluted word of God (Acts 18:11). Now, he heard that these Corinthian Christians were poised to adapt to the low standards around them. Some of them had already compromised by breaking into factions engaging in incest, resorting to lawsuits to settle disputes between them, abusing spiritual gifts and manifesting unholy conduct at home, in the Church and in the public.

Although Paul could not stop his work in Ephesus to visit Corinth, he quickly dispatched a grave letter to the brethren to draw them back to the uncorrupted teaching of Christ. He warns that what they have been accused of are acts of carnality that should not be seen among genuine Christians. As a true shepherd, Paul told them the truth that liberates. He delivered to them “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

Fighting the good fight of faith, defending Christ’s doctrine of outward and inward holiness as qualification for entry into heaven is the responsibility of all believers. Wherever we are, God enjoins us to “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). It is our primary and sacred duty.

THOUGHT FOR YOU: A firm stand for holiness is a courageous stand for Christ.

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Take The Pain

TEXT: 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Several years ago a very graphic movie was made about the horrors of the Vietnam war. There was one scene in the movie where a foot soldier stepped on a land mine and half of his leg was blown away. Frantically he fell down and began to scream hysterically. So loud was his outburst of pain that he put the rest of his comrades in danger by giving their position away. To prevent this from happening the master sergeant jumped on top of him, cupped his hand over the fallen soldier's mouth, and said through gritted teeth, "Take the pain! Take the pain!"

Forgive me for using this gut-wrenching illustration to make my point but sometimes we all face brutal trials that for us are equally severe. Also, I am wondering if God sometimes asks us to do the same thing. "Take the pain!"

Why do I say that? The Bible does tell us to endure hardship like a good soldier in Christ. If we are enduring hardship then that means the hardship is not taken away. Right? Let's also not forget that He never did take away Paul's thorn in the flesh. When God told Paul "My grace is sufficient for you" was He telling him to "Take the pain"?

I believe He was and now we must ask the question "Why?" When you think about it, this is not a hard question to answer. What it all comes down to is that God insists on being number one in our lives. He wants us to seek Him more than anything else.

Here's what I'm saying. Sometimes our trials get so bad that we seek the answer to our problem more than we seek Him. We crave the solution so much that it becomes a god-like idol to us and God says we are to have no other gods before Him.

The enemy sends trials our way to distract us from God and from fulfilling the call on our lives. The devil is hoping we'll get so distracted by the trial that we'll spend more time seeking the solution to our problem than we do God. We are told in scripture to not be deceived by the wiles of the devil and this is one of his most cunning and successful strategies against the body of Christ.

So what should we do? Keep doing what we were doing before the trial began. Learn to seek God more than the solution to all our problems. Seek His face and not His hand. Trust me, when you do this you are showing the devil that he cannot and will not win this battle.

God will not leave you stranded and before you know it the victory will come rushing into your life like a mighty wave on the open sea. I say again, don't make the same mistake I've made several times over by making a god or an idol out of the solution to your problem. Seek God and for sure the victory will be yours. After all, it is He Who always leads us to triumph in Christ Jesus.

*** Written by Randall J. Brewer ***

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The Path Of Love

TEXT: 1 John 3:11-14

Key Verse: "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death" (1 John 3:14).

It is rather fascinating that the apostle who wrote this has become known as the apostle of love. But if you read the gospel records of John, you will note that this is not his nature at all. He and his brother James earned from Jesus the title Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17) because they were constantly wanting to blast back at those who opposed them. John's temperament was not naturally inclined to show love. But when he was born again, there was born into his heart the life of God, and this man began to show love.

Jacob De Shazer bombed Tokyo early in World War II. He was captured by the Japanese and put in prison. He hated his Japanese captors and was so violent and vicious that they feared him. They kept him in solitary confinement because of the hatred with which he lashed out against them. But he obtained a copy of the Bible and began to read it through.

In the loneliness of his cell, he came to realize the life that is in Jesus Christ. An amazing change came over this man. His hatred of the Japanese changed completely. He began to love his captors and to show love toward them, and they were utterly astonished by what had happened to him. Instead of burning with wrath, resentment, and viciousness against them, he became the most docile of prisoners, eagerly cooperating with his captors and praying for them.

Eventually, the story of his change of heart was written up in a little tract, and, after the war, it fell into the hands of a young Japanese captain, Mitsuo Fuchida, the man who led the air raid against Pearl Harbor and gave the command to drop the bombs on that fateful day of December 7.

Mitsuo Fuchida was a hero in Japan after the war because of that exploit and others, but his own heart was empty. Somehow he read the tract that told the story of De Shazer's amazing change of heart. He was arrested and puzzled by the story. From somewhere he obtained a New Testament and began to read it with growing interest.

At last he came to the story of the crucifixion. When he read the Lord's words from the cross, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34), his heart broke. He realized that this one who could love His enemies and pray for those who persecuted Him was manifesting a quality of life that no natural human being could possibly show. Mitsuo Fuchida became a Christian and an evangelist, telling the story of a love that can change human hearts.

Such love is the sign of the new life. It is a love that you not only extend toward those who love you, but toward those who do not love you. It is a love that does not depend upon a reciprocal relationship but loves the unlovely, the unqualified, the ungrateful, the selfish, and the difficult.

This, then, is the character of true love, and it is always evidence that a new life has come, the life born of God.

Food for Thought: This is the character of true love: It does not depend upon a reciprocal relationship but loves the unlovely, the unqualified, the ungrateful, the selfish, and the difficult.

*** Culled from Ray Stedman Ministry | www.raystedman.org

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Welcome To September: Vanity

Reference Text: Isaiah 55:6-7; Ecclesiastes 1:2-14

From The Truth Media family,

Happy New Month!

The fleet astronomer can bore

And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind:

He views their stations, walks from door to door

Surveys, as if he had designed

To make a purchase there: he sees their dances

And knoweth long before

Both their full-eyed aspects, and secret glances

The nimble diver with his side

Cuts through the working waves that he may fetch

His dearly-earned pearl, which God did hide

On purpose from the ventrous wretch

That he might save his life, and also hers

Who with excessive pride

Her own destruction and his danger wears

The subtle chymick can devest

And strip the creature naked, till he find

The callow principles within their nest:

There he imparts to them his mind

Admitted to their bed-chamber, before

They appear trim and drest

To ordinary suitors at the door

What hath not man sought out and found

But his dear God? Who yet His glorious law

Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground

With showers and frosts, with love and awe

So that we need not say, where is this command?

Poor man, thou searchest round

To find out death, but missest life at hand.

*** Written by George Herbert ***

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The Mercy Seat

From every stormy wind that blows,

From every swell-ing tide of woes;

There is a calm, a sure retreat;

It is found beneath the mercy seat.

There is a place where Jesus sheds

The oil of gladness on our heads;

A place than all beside more sweet;

It is the blood-stained mercy seat.

There is a scene where spirits blend,

And friend holds fellowship with friend;

Though sundered far, by faith we meet;

Around one common mercy seat.

There, there on eagle's wings we soar,

And time and sense seem all no more;

And heaven comes down our souls to greet;

And glory crowns the mercy seat.

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Till Death Do Us Apart

Text: Genesis 23:1-6

Key Verse: "Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, I am an alien and a stranger among you" (Genesis 23:3-44).

I love the phrase Abraham rose from beside his dead wife. That signified squaring his shoulder, lifting up his eye, firming his step, and facing life again, and it is followed by a wonderful confession of faith: I am an alien and a stranger among you This is the word of a man who looks beyond all that earth has to offer and once more sees the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God. Although Abraham has been weeping in the valley of the shadow of death, he somehow senses there can be no shadow without a light somewhere.

Have you learned that? When shadows come into your life, it is a sign that there must be light somewhere. Of course, if we turn our back on the light, then we ourselves are the ones who cause the shadow. I think people today are living in a constant shadow because their back is turned toward the light, and they themselves cast a pall upon their own existence. But if we face the light, looking at that light streaming from the city whose builder and maker is God, then the only shadow comes temporarily when some object obscures the light for a moment.

After all, that is what death is; it is simply a temporary obscuring of the light. But the man of faith lifts his eyes and looks beyond the shadow and sees the light still shining, and he says to these people, I am an alien and a stranger among you. Nothing satisfies me down here. I can never settle down among you. The whole land had been given to him by the promise of God, but the dead body of his wife before him reminds him that it is not yet God's time. His faith is not weakened by Sarah's death; rather, it is strengthened by it.

If Abraham had not remembered that he was a pilgrim and a stranger, his heart would have been crushed to despair by the death of his beloved life's companion. But Abraham lifts his eyes beyond this to the light from the city beyond. He remembers that nothing in this life was ever intended to fully meet the needs of the heart of the pilgrim stranger passing through.

Dr. Barnhouse told of a young woman whose husband had been killed in action during the war. When the telegram came, this Christian woman read it through and then said to her mother, I am going up to my room, and please don't disturb me. Her mother called her father at work and told him what had happened, and he came hurrying home and immediately went up to the room. His daughter didn't hear him come in, and he saw her kneeling beside her bed. The telegram was spread open on the bed before her. She was bowed over it. And as he stood there, he heard her say, Oh, my Father, my heavenly Father, The man turned around and went back down the stairs and said to his wife, She is in better hands than mine.

This is what faith does in the hour of grief. The very strength of Abraham's faith in the midst of anguish is that he is an alien and a stranger, a pilgrim passing through to that city that can alone satisfy the human heart.

***Culled from Ray Stedman's Ministry | www.raystedman.org

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So Send I You

So send I you - to labour unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing
So send I you - to toil for Me alone

"As the Father hath sent Me,

So send I you"

So send I you - to bind the bruised and broken,
O'er wand'ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world a-weary
So send I you - to suffer for My sake

So send I you - to loneliness and longing,
With heart a-hung'ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one,
So send I you - to know My love alone

So send I you - to leave your life's ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labour long and love where men revile you,
So send I you - to lose your life in Mine

So send I you - to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho' it be blood to spend and spare not
So send I you - to taste of Calvary.

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