MY ENEMIES

Psalm 27:12 – Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty.

My reading this morning is very interesting. This verse caught my eye. As I watch the swearing in of the new president, I contemplate who are my enemies? Will my country become my enemy? We find a new mind set that some in this new administration have a tremendous animosity towards Christians. There is a call, rather a written petition which has a thrust of re-educating Christians and denying them a voice. There is a call to roll back the pro-christian legislation. The executive orders that has allowed more freedom for Christians is under attack. The assault against Christians has begun.

I have no fear because God is with me. Psa 27:13I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.  Though this nation moves farther away from God, I have his presence. If you know the Lord as Savior, he continually walks beside you. He is our fortress and our shield. He is our defense. My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus and His righteousness. I stand upon the Rock. This is the Rock that followed Israel from the Egyptian bondage and through the wilderness. He will be my guide, my light and my strength through these difficult days. I praise Him for His love. I pray to him for my help. I rest in His mighty arms of comfort. God Bless.

CHRISTIANITY

The best argument for

The best argument for 

Christianity and the

the best argument against

Christianity is the life of

a Christian. Not only are

we to be His witnesses;

we ought to be part of

the evidence.

Hiding

Some Christians

have enrolled in the

witness protection plan.

They are hiding

in plain sight.

JCandler

Our Witness

A Christian

who doesn’t witness is a

contradiction in terms.

Adrian Rogers

TATTOOS

TATTOOS

Lev 19:28  Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. 

The first thing under consideration is cuttings in the flesh. This is a style of pagan worship.

1Ki 18:27  And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. 

28  And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 

We see here that pagan worship involves the cutting of oneself. They were worshiping the dead. They were worshiping dead gods and trying to get a response from them. I doubt any would be cutting themselves and saying it is okay with God. Now to address the after comma remark that so many people want to relegate to nothingness.

I often hear the refrain, “God looks on the heart and He knows what is in my heart.” Do we really think that God accepts what is in our heart that causes us to mar our body with something that God has already forbid for others. We then associate ourselves with the world because of our desire.

2Co_6:17  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,

We are to be a different people from the world. We are not to act like the world or look like the world. Israel was to be a separate nation from all the others. Their God was not written on their skin but in there hearts.

Jer 31:33  But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

Notice the desire of God for His people Israel. God expected the law to be written in their inward parts. Notice the desire that it be written in their hearts. What is written in the heart will be expressed outward so the world witnesses our love for the Lord. This is what He also expects from His Church.

2Co 3:2  Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: 

3  Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. 

So many want to ignore the principles that are given in the Old Testament and yet, we have a broadness in the New Testament that when honestly considered, covers the element of the skin being purposefully marred. We are not of the world do not practice pagan worship such as offering our babies or virgins as sacrifice yet we be engaged in the pagan practice of marring our flesh purposefully and say it honors God.

God writes on our heart by the Spirit of God. This is the mark of God that cannot fade or be removed. We therefore are an epistle of God, not marked on our skin, but the abundance of our heart is expressed through our life that holiness that honors God.

May that mark be the epistle written on our heart and expressed through our separation from the world.

JANUARY 19 – The Land Before us

JANUARY 19 – The Land Before us

Deuteronomy 1:8 – “Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land… “

What a statement that is made here. God said here is the land, all you have to do is go in and possess it. What is there in our life that we have not gone in to possess. I do believe there are items that have been set before us that we have not possessed.

One of these is listed in Galatians 5:22 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, (23) Meekness, temperance:.” How many of these fruits do we possess? These are things that are healthy emotion/attitude adjustments given by the Spirit unto those that are children of God. So why do we hate instead of love, be sad instead of reveling in joy, always in turmoil instead of experiencing peace, short tempered instead of longsuffering, harsh instead of gentle, badly behave instead of good, faithless instead of faith, abrasive instead of meek, running to excess instead of temperance. Why have we not taken each of these gifts one by one and by the power of the Holy Spirit added each of the these free gifts to our life and be conformed to Christ. It has been set before us, why do we not possess these.

These personal life changes would make a difference in another area. Our witness. We interact with lost people every day and blithely go on our way without one concern about their soul and relationship with God. This is a land set before us to possess. While reading years ago, I read about a man that made a promise to God that he would witness to 10 people a day. At the end of a day, he climbed the stairs to his apartment to go to bed. He realized he had only witnessed to 9 people. Desperate to meet what he had committed himself to, he tried to think of where to go to find someone to witness to. No stores were open no cafes were open and then he thought, the train station. There will be somebody there. He hurried to the train station and people were just beginning to unload. He finally had the tenth person to witness the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. This man that heard the gospel that night was saved. A man went in to possess a soul by sharing the gospel. If he had said it is too late, he would have missed this man.

There is so much that God wants for us that we simply turn our back on. What a day to be blessed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and to be bold in possessing the land of witnessing to others.

JANUARY 11 – EGYPT IS DESTROYED

JANUARY 11 – EGYPT IS DESTROYED

Exodus 10:7 – “… Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed. ,

Why does it take the portals of death to get stiff necked people to repent? The lost at times can be so hard headed when it comes to the Lord and the lost peoples’ refusal to repent. Let me give you an example. A had been dealing with a young couple over several months. I had witnessed to them with no results. My wife and I invited them to an event in another town and we picked them up in my Dodge pickup truck It had the seat behind so they were fairly comfortable. As we left the event I began witnessing to them again. An aside, while driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour, they are not going to walk away. As I got to the end of witnessing, the young lady said, “I am mad.” What about? “My parents never told me this.” That was as far as I got that night. A later visit where I dealt with a problem that came up between husband and wife, I once again brought up the issue of salvation. I said to each – you know you are a sinner? Both answered yes. You know that if you die in this condition you will go to hell. Both replied yes. Do you know how to be saved? Both answered yes. Then why aren’t you calling upon the Lord to save you. The said to the husband, “yeah why aren’t you. They are both lost to this day. My question to them would be, “do you not know yet that you are destroying your family”

The sad reality is that it is not only the lost that are in this condition. There are those that profess to know the Lord and yet stubbornly hold on to their favorite sins, some false doctrines and other things that are contrary to God’s Word. Some know the life they should live and refuse to live that life. Men called to preach refuse to preach. Some announce the call to preach and refuse to pastor. Others will pastor but limit the call to a certain distance from their home. It is so easy to look at some one else that is saved and be critical of them. We do not see our own faults. We all to often are so pleased with ourselves we do not have time to worry about whether God is pleased with us or not.

We are to be servants to the only living God. Notice that servants said Egypt is destroyed. We as servants of God need to be bold and wise. We need to be yielded to the will of God. May we reach out to the lost to reveal to them that their lives are destroyed. May we be sensitive to the moving of God in our lives. Now go witness to some one.

BOOM! In Two Minutes, This Admiral Destroys Barack Obama’s Bible Control Plan – The Political Insider

BOOM! In Two Minutes, This Admiral Destroys Barack Obama’s Bible Control Plan – The Political Insider.

Hebrew – Testimonies

 

‘ēḏāh [and] ‘ēḏût

 

The second name we note for God’s Word is testimonies (or “testimony”). The Hebrew is ‘ēdāh (H5713; or ‘ēḏûṯ, H5715), another feminine noun originally meaning a “testimony, witness, or even a warning sign.” Of its twenty-five appearances, fourteen are in Psalms 119 (‘ēḏût appears sixty times, with nine of those in Psalms 119). We should also interject here that all eight of the synonyms we are examining appear in the first eleven verses of that wondrous psalm, which is devoted to praising the virtues, merits, and sufficiency of the Word of God and demonstrates the psalmist’s total commitment to it.

 

This word, therefore, refers to “testifying to a fact or event.” It first appears, for example, in Gen_21:30, where Abraham’s gift of lambs to Abimelech bore witness to Abraham’s statement concerning the ownership of the well at Beersheba. Even more graphic is Gen_31:52, where Jacob used a pile of stones to bear witness to the agreement between him and Laban concerning land boundaries.

 

It eventually came to be used, then, for a solemn testimony of the will of God, a sober and serious expression of God’s standards for human behavior. In other words, God’s testimonies are not suggestions or optional proposals, rather His absolute standards. It is tremendously significant, in fact, that the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments are called God’s “testimony,” ‘ēḏût (Exo_25:16; Exo_31:18; Exo_32:15), God’s “solemn divine charge or duty.” It was also frequently used of the tabernacle (“tabernacle of testimony”, Exo_38:21; Num_1:50; Num_1:53) and even the Ark of the Covenant (“ark of the testimony,” Exo_25:22; Exo_26:33-34; Exo_30:6; Exo_30:26). Further, it is also used at times to refer to the entire law (February 13–16) of God (Psa_19:7; Psa_119:14; Psa_119:31; Psa_119:36; Psa_119:88; Psa_119:99; Psa_119:111; Psa_119:129; Psa_119:144; Psa_119:157).

 

The definition of right behavior, therefore, is not “up for grabs,” as relativism maintains in our day. It is rather a marked-out standard from God. This standard is also what we should be proclaiming without apology to the world, just as David did “before kings” (Psa_119:46); as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did before the king of Babylon (Dan_3:1-16); as Peter did before the religious leaders (Acts 4); as Stephen did before the council (Act_6:15 to Act_7:54); and as Paul did before Felix (Acts 24), Festus (Acts 25), and Agrippa (Acts 26).

 

Scriptures for Study: What do the verses above in Psalms 19, 119 say about the testimonies of God and our response to them?

 

 

 

 

22 – Jan. 22 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound”
Jan. 22, 1949, was the wedding date for Dr. and Mrs. E. Robert Jordan.  From the entry of Jan. 19, you will remember that it was the date of his conversion to Christ.  A young sailor named Tim, had accompanied the Naval Chief his drinking bouts as he made his rounds to the bars and night clubs, he didn’t drink, but would patiently take the abuse that Robert would heap upon him.  After getting busted in Bermuda and spending a night in jail, Tim gave Robert his preacher brothers card and told him that if he was ever in Atlantic City to “look him up.”  When their ship docked, Robert did just that, and knocked around mid-night, and told Frank that his brother Tim had told him to come and see him.  Frank immediately began to witness to him by giving him the plan of salvation.  Night after night, for food and explanation of the scriptures Robert would return.  Finally he went to evangelistic services at Frank’s church and became angry because he thought that Frank had told the preacher about his drinking, cursing, and gambling.  Finally under great conviction the Pastor led him to Christ in his study, along with Tim, who realized that though a cleaner sinner than Robert, he had never really been saved.  Robert returned to his ship at 4:30 am, awakened his men and told them how he was gloriously saved.  The next Sat. he went to the Mission and preached and saw 16 men receive Christ.  Robert completed Bible College, pastored the Calvary Baptist Church in Lansdale, PA for fifty years, helped in starting 100 churches; and founded the Calvary Baptist Seminary.  Amazing Grace how sweet the sound,
Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. IIII: Cummins, pp. 45-47.