Course Directions

“And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise; and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall you do” (Judges 7:17).

God is looking to those to whom He can trust His life to.  Gideon was one of those men who knew he was weak but he found God to be strong.  So in this belief and faith in God, Gideon commands the three hundred men by his side to do as he does because the end result will be victory.

What was Gideon asking the men to do?  He was asking them to hoist the sails of their faith and wait for the wind of God to blow.  Everyone who is born of the Spirit tests his life by the Word of God, and by doing so, he is setting his sails to catch the breath of God.  We place our hands on the rudder, but we are totally dependent on God’s wind to blow.

Gideon blew the trumpet, broke the clay vessel wherein was the candle, and the light inside began to glow outwardly.  When you and I are ready for God to work we will blow the trumpet of proclamation of life in Christ, and those around us will see the light of illumination in us because of our broken consecration before God.

Are you ready to take steps to discipline your inner man?  If you are, what course corrections need to be made in your life even today?

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  • Heaven Is For Real

    “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).

    Too many of us do not realize that Heaven is God’s idea and not ours. We base so much from our humanness instead of God’s reasonableness. Satan has come to blaspheme God’s name and His dwelling place and those who live there (Rev. 13:6). He wants to skew God’s reality of a place called Heaven.

    Do not allow Satan to cause you to think less than God desires for you. Heaven is God’s idea for you and for me. It is the place we should long for and desire more than anything. Really, we do desire this place called Heaven. Every desire to be fulfilled and satisfied is based on the desire to go to this place and dwell there.

    Cyprian, the third century church father, said, “Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land…We regard paradise as our native land.”

    God’s people are going to a tangible place, a real place, that is designed on God’s geographical map. It is not a place of disembodied spirits, for human beings are not suited for such a realm. What we are suited for–what we’ve been specifically designed for–it is a place like the one God made for us: Earth. God has never given up on his original plan for human beings to dwell on Earth. The climax of history will be the creation of new heavens and a New Earth, a resurrected universe inhabited by resurrected people living with the resurrected Jesus (Revelation 21:1-4).

  • God Created Us for Relationships

     “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established” (Proverbs 16:3).

      When we do the right things we will experience God working in and through us that will change our minds and attitudes as well. We usually take the opposite approach. We try to change our thinking before changing or reforming our actions. Obedience and doing are the best ways to get your thinking in line with God’s ways.

       As we personalize God’s truths we will experience God working through us in touching others for Christ. Instead of evangelism being “something we do” it will become that which is natural. Why? Because it is of the outflow of the Holy Spirit working through us. It is the practicing of the truth we know.  What power and freedom!

     

  • Let the Good Times Roll?

     

    “And that, knowing the time, that now is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11).

        There is an old song that was produced and sung in 1978 by the Cars.  It is entitled “Let the Good Times Roll.” Well, America was rolling in good times. She had more influence, more freedom, more stuff, more games, more concerts, more movies, more jobs, more self-absorption, more pornography, more Internet, more travel, more news, more cell phones, and more four-dollar cups of coffee than any nation in the world. Then September 11, 2001 happened!

       Somewhere between September 10th and September 11th, the stick broke, cracked, and splintered into a thousand pieces. It was on that early September morning that the world began to think. With the TV images of the planes again and again crashing into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and into the Pennsylvania field–one wonders if America will wake up from its slumber and sleep on the edge of another fateful morning.

        We are in a war and it is not time to walk out. War is a time to stay put and stay together. Wartime is a time to stay committed. Wartime is a time to forget the petty differences. War is a time to be a man and a woman of God who charges others to stand! Andrew Jackson said, “I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.” Paul says, “It is high time to awake!”

  • You Can Not

    “This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5).

    Mark Twain said these words, “You can’t pray a lie. I found that out.” Have we realized that God is looking for men and women who live a life that is pure and holy before Him? Do we not understand that the way the Lord communicates to us is a life that is filled with the aroma of Christ?

    Our salvation and prayer life is not dependent upon us. Our lives are not dependent upon our living it out. Our goals are not His nor are our ways. God began a new work in us when we were redeemed by the blood of Christ. He cleansed us and claimed us for His own. Now until we understand that we don’t know how to pray.
     
    Our fellowship with God and what we have in Him, and our lives being constantly cleansed, which is abiding in Him and our allowing the Spirit of God to work in us, how?–    through the Word of God, the church of God, the sufferings of life–all of which God will use to speak to us. This is how we pray. Not with a lie but with truth. Too many say they pray but their lives are no where ready to receive God’s prayer request.

  • 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.

  • Don’t Miss This

    “The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to
    go forward” (Exodus 14:15, ESV).

    The children of Israel were facing a dilemma. The army of Pharaoh behind
    them and the Red Sea in front of them. The mountains flanked them. What
    would they do?

    God said to Moses to take the children of Israel forward. “Go forward” the
    Lord God said. Moses did not choose to be nostalgic about the past to what
    God has already done.  He could have prayed and not listened to God. After
    whining Moses could have said, “You are on your own.” Moses could have
    disobeyed God.

    Moses led the children of Israel forward into a massive sea. In that moment
    of crisis he led them forward. This is a Red Sea Rule. Quit marinating on
    the ups and downs of your life. Fix your gaze on the present and look to the
    future and go forward. Do what God has said to do.

    Solomon says, “Let your eyes look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead.
    Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be
    established. Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away
    from evil” (Proverbs 4:25-27).