A New Day

“Therefore, I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

 Three items of interest to a man or woman who is wanting to please the Lord: I will look, I will wait, and I will pray. Perception, patience, and prayer gives the soul rest for the new day.

 God has promised to come to the help of any who would call upon Him. The prophet intercedes on behalf of Israel, identifying himself with them. God saves from destruction and from deception and Micah knows it. When we pray for others something takes place like no other.

 Call upon the name of the Lord for others today. Micah’s name means, “Who is like the Lord?” We are no more like the Lord than when we pray for others. Try intercession and see if your life changes in that moment.

 

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    Whenever the Holy Spirit enters any person, He brings His holy nature with Him. The result is that all those in whom the Spirit of God dwells have new holy hungers and holy loves they did not have prior to having His indwelling presence.
    There are new created things that take place. They hunger for His holy Word, which they used to find boring or irrelevant. They love fellowship with the people of God, finding it unimaginable to live apart from meaningful interaction with them. Hearts and minds find new desires of holy longings. They long to live in a body without sin. They groan for a holy world filled with holy people, and long to see at last the face of the one that angels call “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Rev. 4:8).
    This is the heartbeat of 100 percent of the hearts where the Spirit of God lives. A person may be nine years of age, yet where the Spirit of God has come to him or her, then these hungers are planted there.
    According to the Word of God, of course, there is a desire to pray. The Spirit of God creates an inward desire to cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). All those who are born again, born of God, want to pray.
    It does not matter if the one who says he is born again is nine or ninety, there is the ever-fresh, evergreen work of the Holy Spirit manifested in every person in whom He dwells.

  • Get In Shape

     

    “So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days” (Nehemiah 6:15).

      The enemy doesn’t mind if you are spiritually active. He just doesn’t want you to be spiritually effective. One may be active in church, doctrinally pure, serving on the church board, teaching, etc…. but if one is not involved in the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life then that life is at a minimal. Minimal in church and minimal in the family.

         “What are the spiritual disciplines?” you ask. It is the reverence for God’s Word and the power of effective praying. We owe to Scripture the same reverence we owe to God. The Bible is revered but it is not read. There is low reading of the Bible by believers.

          “Sine qua non” is a Latin phrase which means “without which, nothing.” Without a good diet of Scripture and an exercise in the effectiveness of praying, you’ve got nothing. You and I cannot finish the Christian marathon without true prayer. We cannot even enter the race without the Word of

  • Are you Gold?

    “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out of every street” (Lamentations 4:1).
    Gold is full of luster, very malleable, and has great value. Gold has a center of gravity and it is not easily rusted. God says of His city and her people they were like gold at one time. But now Jeremiah laments the city of Jerusalem, for she has become tarnished and dulled. Her children, the seed of God’s people, no longer shine for Jehovah God.
    There is change all around us. What was once bright now has become dull. Those that once went after the gold of God’s Word now are seeking the fool’s gold of the world. What once was the wisdom of the ages now has become a book that is hardly touched.
    Where are the fathers that have not changed?  Where are the children that shine as gold? Dads, moms, and grandparents, seem to be out of touch with God. Oh there is a touch but that is about it.
    America used to shine but now she is as brass. What once was gold now has been stolen. So to put on a good act America is borrowed brass that is shined up with fancy patriotic songs that seem to shine. But words can never do the work that only God can.
    Jeremiah is not asking a question; he is stating a fact. And because of his verbal analysis of the state of the nation, he is thrown into jail and into a deep pit left to rot. You know a nation is no longer gold when it rejects its prophets and its preachers. When the people want to get rid of that which is pure you can know that judgment is on the way.
    What once was gold is now but earthen vessels of clay. Dull, lifeless, cracked, and without real value. The gold has been stripped away. The power and presence of God has left that which was once alive and vibrant and expectant.
    Check the facts:  Are you tenderhearted toward God and others? Does the Word of God change you as you read it? Are you growing into the likeness of Jesus? Are your children living for God? Are you as regular in church attendance as beforehand? Does prayer rise in your heart as never before? Are you ready before God to easily repent of sin at every turn? How hard is it for others to get you off the gold path? And how easy is it for God to get you back on it?
    Brass will shine, but it is not like gold. We will either turn back to the gold standard or nothing. We have been robbed of the gold. A cheaper brand of Christianity is with us today. Rather than pay the price we have settled down to being just clay pitchers pottered by our own hands.

  • Is God on America’s Side?

    “Are you for us, or for our adversaries? No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord” (Joshua 5:13-14).

    Is God an American?  Is He a Republican?  Is He a Democrat?  Is God King and Defender of our nation?  In Christian thought God has been often invoked for political ends, but history shows He will not be so used.

    We are not just another country, but neither are we God’s chosen people.  We should not believe that America is God’s chosen nation.  God established one chosen nation and people:  the Jews.  We are not Israel.  We are not God’s gift to the world.

    There is no doubt we drink from wells we did not dig and we eat fruit from trees we did not plant.  We will no doubt be judged nationally and individually with stricter judgment for “unto whom much is given, much is required.”  We expect blessing, but we have done plenty to expect judgment.

    Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, was asked whether God was on his side and he replied, “I do not care whether God is on my side; the important question is whether I am on God’s side, for God is always right.”

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  • Influencers Who Refuse to be Influenced

    “You are here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage” (Matthew 5:13, The Message).

    You know that salt seasons and stings. When you go to the movie theatre and order a drink you have to get popcorn and you want it seasoned with salt and butter, lots of it. It just makes all things taste better. Then you chase it down with an extra-large Coke that you pay too much for that cost them pennies on the dollar.

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    You and I are to thirst after God. We are to craft our lives in such a way that our thoughts, our habits, our actions and reactions make people who know us simply crave God. We are salt in a dying society.

    Even if others do not want our God, our lives will cause others to feel the sting inwardly of rejecting the One who loves them. If you live for the Lord Jesus you will encounter those who do not appreciate those who live and tell the truth. It is a stinging rebuke to their godless life, and inside, they wince in pain.

    We are called to be salt – and not sugar! – in our world. We are called to season and to sting. It is good to be in a big salt shaker known as sanctuaries, huddled in fear of a big, bad world. But salty people do not need seasoning! It’s the ones who are headed to Hell who need to know there is a God who lives in us. It’s the blind who need seeing! We are not to be the bland leading the bland.

  • God the Shelter

    “From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I”

    (Psalm 61:2).

     

    Jesus is to be the center of it all. Everything.
    Today at the Good News Baptist Church on the island of St. Maarten, we sang a song that expressed this prayer. God is the star of His own movie. For so many of us we think indirectly or directly much of this thought:  It is about us.
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