Needed Works Of Faith

Text: JAMES 2:10-26

An unsparing holiness preacher concerning whom little is known of his domestic life lived down town in a Council flat. He told his staff and congregation never to visit him at home without an appointment.

An usher living close by frequently flouted this rule preferring to come to the pastor’s house to submit reports without prior notice. The pastor desiring to know the reason asked the young man: “Did you realize you are disobedient by coming to my house without inviting you?” The usher answered: “I am sorry, but I did it that I might, by some chance, come to discover how you react to the provocations of belligerent neighbours, the disturbing noises of infant wards and mischief of domestic staff in your home. This I hoped, would help me beyond lessons from your sermons.”

Our profession may be great, but our conduct and attitude both in good and bad times are the real proofs of our hearts and the evidence of our faith.

In the text above, high premium is placed on faith evidenced by works. The faith that shows no corresponding positive traits is dead, and to say the least, worthless. True faith in the Lord Jesus Christ works out positive changes in the believer. If these desirable changes are not in our lives, it is doubtful whether we have been united with Christ.

Works of faith are the fruits of our Christian life made possible because of our living union with Christ. Those who are destitute of them have never known the Saviour including others who made only superficial commitment to follow Him.

We cannot produce this fruits on our own efforts outside of Christ. Even though we try to do what is good and right, staying close to Jesus and being obedient to His word is the only way to live a fruitful Christian life. We must determine to quit superficial Christianity and show evidence of our walk with God by bearing fruits of the Spirit.

Thought for you: A tree is known not by the leaves but by the fruits.

THE TRUTH MEDIA

…building the body of Christ

Don't Forget The Mirror

Text: James 1:16-27

Key Verse: “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was” (James 1:23, 24)

Imagine yourself standing before your mirror in the morning dressed to go out. As you look at the mirror, you observed your hair is not combed, your clothes not well adjusted and everything just looked rough and disheveled. What would you do?

Would you ignore what you saw in the mirror and feel it is not important? Would you think it would be okay to go out all the same and manage that shameful look? Do you think you would be able to carry on with an air of confidence all through the day if you went out the way you looked without making every necessary adjustment? Certainly not. When you take a look at the mirror each day, it is not just for the fun of it. It is to ensure you are looking good enough and well suited for the day.

This is the same thing we do each time we look at the Word of God. The Word of God is the divine mirror that tells us exactly how we look. It reveals our true spiritual state to us and tells what we need to add on or put away in order to have a perfect day. In our text today, we are admonished to receive the Word of God with meekness. As we read the Word, we are to adjust our lives by it. This is what it means to be doers of the word.

We cannot really tell our true spiritual state until we take a deep and sincere look at the Bible. While it is possible for some mirror to give us a distorted impression of ourselves, the Word of God shows us exactly how we look. There is no defect in God’s Word.

More than showing us how we look, the Word of God has the power to set our lives right if we allow it. This is why we must make it a daily practice to take a look at the mirror of the Word of God before we set out each day. This gives us the confidence we need and guarantees our success in all that we do.

Thought for you: You are not ready for the day without a look at God’s Word

THE TRUTH MEDIA

…building the body of Christ

The Cross, Stark And Still

Text: Isaiah 55:6; John 3:16

Into the depths of untold depravity,

A perfect creation had fallen away;

Unimagined grace poured out from our God above -

As His Hand of wrath was firmly stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill…

Subtly calls for the World’s attention.

Since the dawn of everlasting time,

Our Savior awaited His appointed day;

Despite humanity’s race to certain doom –

His Hand of wrath was intentionally stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill…

Continues to demonstrate His gift of Salvation.

The twinkling stars danced across the midnight blue

As songs arose from the angelic array;

Quietly the Messianic babe in a manger lay –

As His Hand of wrath was lovingly stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill…

Serves as a testament of Love’s perfection.

A carpenter's son? He’s just a man!

His godly claim on earth displayed

Had believers searching for purest faith –

His Hand of wrath was securely stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill…

Reminds that our debt was paid for sin’s violation.

In the face of false accusations,

Christ held His tongue to Pilate’s dismay,

For God’s plan played out for all to see –

As His Hand of wrath was purposely stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill…

Is a backdrop for a risen Lord calling us with adoration.

*** Author's Notes ***

This is a collaboration piece with Mr. Jeffrey Jordan of Wichita Falls, Texas.

Learn more about me and my poetry at:

http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2012, All rights reserved.

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.

Soaring Alone

Text: 2 Timothy 1:7; Exodus 19:4

I recently listened to a teaching series where the way of the eagle was compared to the Christian life. It was a powerful series to say the least. One thing that was said really struck a chord with me, “Chickens flock together but eagles soar alone.” I was reminded of what Jesus said in John 16:32, “Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” In my heart at this moment is the subject of “aloneness.” Not loneliness - “aloneness.” Chickens flock together but eagles soar alone. We must ask ourselves, do we want to be chickens who flap their wings but go nowhere or do we want to be mighty eagles who spread their wings and soar on the wind currents of the Holy Spirit?

Sad to say, the world is filled with “flapping” Christians and I am not one of them. No sir! I strive every day to be an “eagle” Christian and one main attribute of these kind of believers is that they soar alone. John the Baptist comes to my mind. Yes, he had a following but he soared alone. As I look back on my life I can say that “aloneness” has been a major characteristic of my life. I am not what you would call a “people person.” I would rather spend the day alone hiking in the woods than to have a huge gathering of people over to my house for Sunday dinner. I love people but I don’t need them to feel a sense of value about myself.

A “people person” tends to rely on people more than they rely on God. They need people the same way they need food and water. Oftentimes they go to God as a last resort. They ask their friends to pray for them instead of going into the throne room themselves. Chickens flock together but eagles soar alone. Eagles say, “Where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord!” I learned at an early age to live a life of total dependence on God. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I never had a bunch of people to help me during times of trouble. Nobody gave me a free car or paid for my college education. I never had a “free ride” in life and this is why I am the person I am today. Character was developed as a result of “soaring alone” and faith came as a result of depending on God to meet my every need.

When you soar alone you can be friends with others where your only objective is to be a blessing to them. Because you depend on God and not people there will be no strings attached to your friendship. Gone will be the pressure they may feel thinking that you are expecting something from them. Now you can “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” What you make happen for others, God (not people) will make happen for you. Only an eagle believer can be a friend who sticks closer than a brother. All this is possible when one has a sense of “aloneness.” When you are alone with God you can soar like an eagle.

I cannot count the times I have needed a helping hand or an encouraging word from another person. Countless times! But they were never there. They were either too caught up in their own problems or were too self-centered to care what was happening to somebody else. But praise God, He was always there with open, outstretched arms! My Lord! My “ever present help in time of need.”

I firmly believe that God designed it that way. He will share the glory with no man. All people - I don’t care who they are - have the potential of letting you down. When you put all your trust and dependence on a certain individual God will arrange it for that person to somehow not meet your need to total satisfaction. God wants to be the only one you go to with total trust and confidence. Soaring alone doesn't mean you don’t have fellowship with other people. It means your dependence is on God and Him alone.

On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came as “a mighty rushing wind.” An eagle soars on the wind currents of the Spirit of God. Not long ago I was at my favorite state park and I hiked to a point called “Eagle Cliff.” I looked up and saw a giant bird with outstretched wings soaring in the air. That’s all it did. It soared! Not once as I watched it did it flap it’s wings. No, it soared! I envied that bird and then I noticed that it was all by itself. It soared alone! What am I saying? Trust in God and Him alone. Then go out and soar like an eagle. God said in Ex. 19:4: “…I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.”

*** Written by Randall J. Brewer ***

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.

The Reciprocity Of Love

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:11-13

Key Verse: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide" (2 Corinthians 6-11 RSV).

Paul loved these people in Corinth, and he has manifested that love in various ways toward them. He has demonstrated it, as he says here, by two special things. Our mouth is open to you, he says. That means he communicated with them; he told them what was going on in his own life; he shared with them his feelings, struggles, failures, pressures, and problems, and he let them know how he coped with them. That is always a mark of love. To open up to others is to love them. Conversely, to close up and not communicate is to violate love.

This is a frequent problem in churches today. Christians actually think it is right for them to be closed in on themselves, to be private persons, unwilling to communicate who they are and how they feel and where they are in their lives. That, of course, is the way of the world. The world teaches us to let no one see who we are. But we need to understand that when we become Christians, we must learn to open up to one another.

Our heart is wide, he says. He means there is no favoritism; he includes the whole congregation. He did not merely love the nice people among them. He loved them all: the difficult ones, the ones who were struggling, and the hard-to-get-along-with ones as well. There were no preconditions that he demanded before he would love somebody in the congregation either. He accepted them as people. Though he knew their struggles, their weaknesses, their heartaches, their failures, and their resistance, he loved them.

The problem was that they did not love him in return. This is the problem in churches, in individual lives, in homes, in families, and in marriages today. It is a failure to understand the reciprocal nature of love. Love is a two-way street. It always is; it is inherently so. Love requires a response. Paul was loving them, but they were not loving him back. They were closed; they were unresponsive; they were coldly self-contained toward him. And the result? Paul puts it in one word: They were restricted (2 Corinthians 6:12 RSV). What does that mean? It means they were limited; they were imprisoned within the narrow boundaries of their own selfish lives.

That is why Paul pleads here with these Corinthians: Oh! Corinthians, widen your hearts unto us. You are not restricted by us. You are restricted by yourselves, in your own affections. If you really want to experience the richness of love, then love back when you are loved. This is one of the most important lessons we can ever learn in life. Love must respond. When you are loved, what do you do? Do you love back, or do you say, What a wonderful feeling! I hope they will keep that up? Do you expect it all to come to you without a reciprocal response from you? No, that is impossible. Love must respond.

*** Ray Stedman Minsistry Daily Devotional | www.raystedman.org ***

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ

Love Is A Debt You Owe

Text: Romans 13:8

Paul wrote in Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Love is a debt you owe to everybody even if you feel like they don’t deserve it. It should be on the forefront of our minds that God loved each of us when we were yet sinners and also didn't deserve it.

Love is not a feeling, but rather is a spiritual force radiating out of your innermost being. God is love and His love is revealed and manifested by you being nice to someone. This love can produce good feelings, but you can love without feelings or even with bad feelings.

Love is a decision, and when the right decision is made you can love somebody even when you want to tell them off or punch their lights out. The nature of the flesh is to respond to hurt feelings. If someone slaps you, you want to slap them back harder.

The key is to be led by the Spirit and not by fickle feelings that are forever changing from one moment to the next. Galatians 5:15, 16 tell us, “But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”

Love does no harm to a neighbor Romans 13:10 and the Message Bible records these instructions from Romans 12: “Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle” (Verses 9, 10). “Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath” (Verse 14). “Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you have got it in you, get along with everybody” (Verses 17, 18). “Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good” (Verse 21).

“Love thinks no evil” (1 Corinthians 13:50) and takes no thought about how to hurt somebody. Neither should one rejoice if and when your enemy falls and gets hurt. God loves through you, and you should help that fallen person get back on his feet and point him in the right direction.

In the Spirit we are to “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,” (Eph. 6:10) but in our relationships with other people we are to be harmless as a dove. Titus 3:1b, 2 tell us “to be ready for every good work, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men.”

Love cares when something good happens to somebody else. Love is not jealous or envious, but instead rejoices when somebody else gets blessed. John, the disciple of love who laid his head on the bosom of Jesus, gave what is probably the most prominent instruction about love when he wrote in 1 John 3:18, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”

The Message Bible says, “Let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality.” John knew that God will move when love is demonstrated.

*** Written by Randall Brewer ***

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.

Antiphon

Text: 113:3

Put your voice to use and gladly sing

Praise the Lord, our God and king

The heavens are not too high

With gratitude His praise will fly

The earth is not too low

For His praise go grow

Put your voice to use and gladly sing

Praise the Lord, our God and king

Believers with psalms must shout

No door can keep them out

But above all, the heart

Must bear the longest part

*** Originally written by George Herbert | Edited by Jacobs Adewale ***

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.

A Broken Heart

Text: Psalm 34:18

Key Verse: "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit."

A broken heart,

A soul that shatters

Needs the One

Who really matters.

Though time cures,

The dejected heart

Jesus will heal . . .

The broken part

Life is unkind,

We all know this

And His compassion

We often miss.

Human affection,

Can be so cruel

But to Him we're like

A precious jewel.

Jesus loves,

The broken heart

From the sorrowful one

He'll never part!

*** Written by Deborah Ann Belka ***

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ

Forgiveness: When Discipline Ends

Text: 2 Corinthians 2:5-11

Key Verse: “If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven – if there was anything to forgive – I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake” (2 Corinthians 2:10).

Paul expresses no hard feelings or recriminations nor exhibits an I-can-forgive, but-I-can't-forget attitude. We often hear people speak about forgiveness in this way, and this attitude reveals a lack of understanding of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness, basically, is a promise that you make to three different individuals. This is true always, in every case of forgiveness.

First, it is a promise that you make to the individual who has offended you and now has repented, in which you are saying to him or her, I will not let my attitude toward you be governed any longer by this offense. It has been put aside. My treatment of you from here on will be as though this has never happened. It is a promise you make never to bring it up again. In marriage many problems go on for years because couples tend to go back and dig up the past, which is an indication that it has never been forgiven. Some mates don't get hysterical; they get historical! That is the problem, and that creates a problem.

Second, it is a promise not to pass it on to anybody else. When a matter is forgiven, it is to be forgotten. Now it may be that everyone knows about the matter, because, as in this case in Corinth, it had been told to the whole church. But what it means is that nobody brings up the issue again or holds it over a forgiven person's head or reminds him or her of it every time any further difficulty occurs. It is a promise to drop the matter, leave it in the past, and never bring it up to anybody again.

Third, and probably most important, it is a promise to yourself that when your memory goes back to it, as it will occasionally, you are not going to allow it to seize hold of your heart and make you angry all over again. The minute it comes back to mind, you put it aside as something that belongs to the past. You are not going to dwell on it. It is a promise, therefore, to repeat your act of forgiveness, no matter how often the memory comes up. That is what forgiveness is; and Paul is ready to do this.

The reason, of course, is because he himself has been forgiven. People tell me sometimes, I just can't forgive in this case. The person has admitted her wrongdoing and has asked me to forgive her, but I just can't do it. It hurt me too much. It is a revelation to me that the person who has been wronged has never realized how much he has been forgiven already. The basis for Christian forgiveness is always, Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).

== Culled from Ray Stedman’s Ministry | www.raystedman.org

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.

Freedom To Remove The Mask

Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-18

Key Verse: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

The apostle reminds the Corinthians immediately that the Lord is in their hearts, in their human spirits. Their hope of freedom comes from that great fact, for the one who is within them is God Himself. Paul identifies Him: the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Freedom is being out in the open, having boldness, having nothing to hide. Those who are free are those who do not have any reputation to defend, no image to hide behind, nothing to preserve about themselves. They can be themselves. Everywhere today people are longing for this type of freedom. People want to be themselves. I've got to be me, we hear, and there is nothing wrong with that. God wants you to be you, too. The only thing wrong is the way we do it. We are being taught in the world that the way to be me is to think about my advantage, my efforts, and to defend and demand them.

The Word of God teaches us it is quite another process. Being yourself and having freedom does not mean denying the potential for all the evil that is possible in your heart and in your life, because you have another basis on which you receive God's acceptance and approval. His acceptance and approval are gifts to you. The faith He gives continually accepts anew the gift of righteousness of already being pleasing to God, and, on that basis, you serve Him out of a heart of gratitude for what you already have.

You do not have to earn His favor, and your performance is not going to affect it. When you start looking at the one who is doing this in your life, the Lord Jesus, and beholding Him with all your veils taken away so you are not afraid to look at your own evil capacity, then a wonderful thing happens. Without even knowing that you are doing it, just by rejoicing in what you have and serving the Lord who gave it to you, you suddenly discover--and other people will discover--that you are becoming a loving person. And love is the fulfilling of the Law; the very demand that God made in the Law that you tried so hard to fulfill by your self-effort will be fulfilled without your even realizing it when you begin to love out of the grace and forgiveness of God.

It is a process of growth. It does not happen in one great transformation when you are suddenly sanctified, filled with the Spirit, or baptized. It happens as you keep your eyes on the glory of the Lord and not on the face of Moses, not on self-effort but on what He is already giving you. When you do, you suddenly discover the Spirit of God has been at work making gradual changes. You are becoming a loving person, easier to live with, more attractive, more compelling. Your life is deepening as it is losing its shallowness; you are more understanding of things. That is the work of the Spirit. Notice what he says: this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. It is not you who does it; it is He.

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

THE TRUTH MEDIA

...building the body of Christ.