Third Day

  • A New Creature

    “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:7).

     

    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.

  • 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.
    When we pray we are asking God to guide, to guard, and to govern. We must realize He is the One who gives breath and life. He is the only One who has the power and the prowess to do just this. And He desires to honor you as you and I honor Him. We are very insignificant when it comes to the almightiness of the God who stands apart from us.
    Today when you call upon His name remember that He loves you and He desires you with all of your warts and blemishes. He desires greatly to bring glory to His own name through your life. It is God who is pursuing Himself in you. Allow this God of glory to have His will and His pleasure in your life. It is amazing to receive and feel His love.

  • A Crazy Kind-Of-Love

    “…Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad” (Acts 26:24)

     

    Francois Fenelon said, “To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins – is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?” Is the church missing what God intended her to be? In many ways, and I’m nervous about it, the church is not doing so well.

     

    It used to be that “Good Christians” avoided drinking, drugs, sex, swearing, and fought their desires in order to please God. That is the way many were brought up during the Christian culture of the day. In reality and hindsight, I don’t believe the church’s teachings were incorrect, just incomplete.

     

    If we would get into the Word of God and think Biblically instead of conventionally, it would change our paradigm. Our thinking would explode and it would be exhilarating. We have all we need. We have all of Jesus we need. What we don’t have is to want Jesus more.

     

    Are you bored with American Christianity and that which it offers? Do you want to rise above the plateau of the American style of doing church? Would you want to get to the place where you would rather die than let go of your convictions in Christ?

     

    “More God” and “more life” follows. Not to be immune from self-giving is to realize how wonderful God is. To not hold back anything but to give all is the utmost way to live. To be totally abandoned is to be totally absorbed.

     

    God wants to lead a group of comfortable people into lives of risk and adventure. He wants us to love people like we never have before and to go to extremes to do just that.

  • Mary Ida Sutton Stephens

     

    Mary Ida Stephens will be spoken of today in our church where she attended faithfully and participated beautifully. As her pastor, there is an emptiness that has affected me since her sickness and Home-Going. It was the last few weeks of her life that really concerned me, that drew my heart to the God of heaven for her and the family she loved. Early on Sunday morning she passed into glory; that still leaves a void in the heart.

     

    I am so grateful for God’s good work in her and God’s good work through her. She brightened our lives and others. Her fingerprints will continue to be seen and missed. Mary Ida touched a lot of lives. She is indelibly etched upon our hearts and minds.

     

    At this time we are reminded of God’s gift He gave to us here at Kinnett. Lots of good things happened when Ron and Mary Ida made their way to Morehead Street in Burlington. They were such a blessing!

     

    We love her family. They have been supportive of Ida and have been very kind to her. We have seen the grace of our great and wonderful God to her children and her family. It is hard to replace a lady like unto her. But who wants to replace her?  She was unique, loving, talented, and gracious.

     

    I pray that when God takes us home that it will be said of each that we have effected change.  May it be said, “We loved God more than anything or anyone.”

     

    Give God all of yourself; don’t hold anything back – for only what’s done for Christ will last. We think if we hold on to this or hold on to that tightly that all be good. No, my friend, what we give up and give over and lose will be that which we will hold in eternity.

     

    We look forward to the day when we will see, again, Mary Ida Stephens. Her body will be laid to rest today awaiting resurrection. She is not here. She is with her Lord and all of the saints of glory! What a reunion it will be when we will see Mary Ida in the light of Christ’s glory.

     

    I love you dearly,

     

    Pastor Don

  • 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.