Practice love diligently...

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love. I Cor 13:13

Practice love diligently. It is one of those graces, above all, which grow by constant exercise. Strive more and more to carry it into every little detail of daily life. Watch over your own tongue and temper throughout every hour of the day...

Remember the words of Paul: "Do everything in love" (1 Corinthians 16:14).  Love should be seen in little things as well as in great ones. Remember, not least, the words of Peter: "Love each other deeply"; not a love which just barely is a flame, but a burning, shining fire, which everyone around us can see (1 Peter 4:8).

It may cost pains and trouble to keep these things in mind. There may be little encouragement from the example of others. But persevere. Love like this brings its own reward.



-J.C. Ryle

http://jcrylequotes.com

He's A Guardian Angel

Homeless Man Saves Newborn Baby During Emergency Delivery - He's a Guardian Angel! from keephopealive on GodTube.

Be still and know...

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted throughout the earth.” Ps 46:10 

God is indeed the genuine Counterpart which alone can finally and primarily satisfy man and all creation as such. Far too often, however, this has been said in so general and therefore unconvincing a manner that we cannot be content to make the word “God” our final, or perhaps even our basic, term.

Far too often this word (God) is used simply as a pseudonym for the limitation of all human understanding, whether of self or the world. Far too often what is meant by God is something quite different, namely the unsubstantial, unprofitable and fundamentally very tedious magnitude known as transcendence, not as a genuine counterpart, nor a true other, nor a real outside and beyond, but as an illusionary reflection of human freedom, as its projection into the vacuum of utter abstraction.

And it is characteristic of this transcendence that it neither has a specific will, nor accomplishes a specific act, nor speaks a specific word, nor exercises a specific power and authority. It can neither bind man effectively nor effectively liberate him. It cannot be for his life either a clear meaning or a distinct person.

Who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn from God as He has revealed Himself and His nature, by His holy word.

-- Barth

In The Beginning

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Jn 1:1-4

God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse.  And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse.

-Barth

Amazing Leap of Faith!

Amazing Leap of Faith! What You Didn't Know About The Man Who Jumped From Space from ourgodisforus on GodTube.

He will satisfy your needs.

The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Isa 58:11

You are free to all that is in the Bible. Here is a never- failing treasure filled with boundless stores of grace. It is the bank of heaven: you may draw from it as much as you please without let or hindrance. Bring nothing with you, except faith. Bring as much faith as you can get, and you are welcome to all that is in the Bible. There is not a promise, not a word in it, that is not yours. In the depths of tribulation let it comfort you. Mid waves of distress let it cheer you. When sorrows surround thee, let it be thy helper. This is thy father's love- token: let it never be shut up and covered with dust. Thou art free to it-- use, then, thy freedom.

-Spurgeon

The path to God

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jn 14:6

Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man, and if you would find God, you must find him in the person of Jesus the Nazarene, who is also the Son of the Highest. You will find Jesus by believing him, trusting him, resting upon him. When you have trusted Jesus, you have found God in Jesus, for he hath said, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” Then have you come to God when you have believed in Jesus Christ. How simple this is! How unencumbered with subtleties and difficulties! When God gives grace, how easy and how plain is believing. Salvation is not by doing, nor by being, nor by feeling, but simply by believing.

-Spurgeon

http://www.thedailyspurgeon.com

How will the Church respond?

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;…” Acts 1:8

The promise, the provision, the need of the hour, is the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon consecrated men and women.  The church needs power to take and maintain her stand for righteousness.

This is a day of compromise and lowered moral and spiritual standards, and the church must lift up her voice to rebuke sin, and present Christ as the only and all-sufficient Savior  and to call the nations back to God ere they die by their own hand upon the grave of collapsed civilization.  She must hold aloft the torch of God’s Word in the midst of the gathering darkness of atheism and increasing wickedness.

The nations of the earth are trembling under the tread of gathering armies, the dark clouds of uncertainty and apprehension are lowering, men’s hearts are clutched by a nameless, senseless, fear; our boasted modern civilization teeters upon its crumbling throne.

Oh, church of the living God, arise, shine in all thy glorious light, nor fail to warn the perishing sons of men that their only hope, their only safety is in the coming King, Jesus.  Shall the church fail God in this crucial hour, or shall she manifest a sweet, kind, Christlike spirit all the while, “the whole world is in the midst of a vast revolution in economics, in politics, in morals, in the home and family, in the status of woman, in the relation of the sexes, in the fundamental thoughts of men.”  Every fundamental institution of human society is feeling the onslaught of a changing, anti-Christian age.

How refreshing to find a Christian who is baptized with the Holy Ghost and is living in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, earnestly seeking to represent Jesus!

-H.J. Felter, (Pilgrim Holiness Advocate, 1939)

A Harvard Doctor’s Experience With Death and Afterlife

A Harvard Doctor’s Experience With Death and Afterlife - Watch What He Says About Heaven! from ourprecioussavior on GodTube.

"Thy Word"

“For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in the heaven.” – Psa 119:89


The Greatest book in all the world has survived three great dangers – the negligence of its friends, the hatred of its enemies, and the false systems built upon it.

The Bible is the most outstanding book ever written.  Civilizations crumble, but the Word of God endures.  There is a majesty and beauty about its stately words which remind us that God is speaking.  But we must beware lest we extol the Bible, yet fail to practice its teaching.

“Man must ever be trying his spirit against the spirit of the world.  Calamity smites him; confusion overtakes him; fortune smiles, and then suddenly frowns upon him.  Out of it all this welter of conflicting emotions he cries for a sure word of direction, a solace to his wounded spirit, a light amid his surrounding darkness.  These he must have or perish.  With grateful heart he finds them, in the Bible.  It speaks his language; it finds him where he is, and points him to the place to which he wishes to go.”

The Bible makes its appeal to every thoughtful reader by lifting his eyes far above the present, transient scene, and helping him to again discover the “sense of eternity” in the midst of time.  Whe men live only for the present, they are always in despair about the future.  We must meet the challenge of today in the light of tomorrow.  Many times today we are tempted to discouragement by the threatening clouds of war, the unjust distribution of wealth, or the continuance of bitter proverty and want.  We see a world in confusion, overrun with materialism, bewilderment, and despair.  But one deep look into the eternal, onward-moving purposes of God as revealed in the Bible, and we plant our feet again upon the highway of hope, and push forth to a sure and eternal destiny.  In thus rediscovering the Bible we rediscover a worth motive for living, and find happiness within.


--H. J. Fleter “Pilgrim Holiness Advocate, 1939”

Who Should I Trust?

Where is the way to Heaven? Whom shall I trust? Who will guide me? What is truth? This was the unanswered question of Pilate, as he sought to evade the tremendous responsibility thrust upon him.

"What is truth?" asks the scientific investigator as he spends a lifetime and vast sums of money to wrestle the secret from reluctant nature. "What is truth?" asks the man on the street as he listens to the hoarse cry of "would be" religious leaders—"This is the way, this is the way." "What is truth?" asks the theologian as he earnestly searches the works on theology available to him, as he mops his brow, and searches again. "What is truth?" cries our youth as they stand at the crossroads of decision, facing the important issues of uncertain human life and the certain issues of eternal destiny. Well might they ask, "Where is truth?" "Where shall I find it?" "Who will show me the way?"

Man, in his search for truth, has often gone astray and sought it in the wrong place. Jesus, the Eternal Word, who was God and was with God, said, "Thy Word is truth." Yes, God's Word is present, eternal, abiding truth. Grace and truth came by Him, who is "the way, the truth, and the life." His life was deity in expression, translating itself into terms understandable by man. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

The truth of God endureth to all generations, and Jesus declared that those who should know the truth would be made free; that those who were of the truth would hear His voice in obedience and love. The Spirit of God is a Spirit of truth, and "the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness and truth." We are chosen to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, which becomes our shield and buckler and enables us to worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.

In discussing the question, "What is the truth as it is in Jesus?" we note that God is the source of truth. We note further that this divine truth is revealed in the Bible, in the life and teachings of Christ, and by the Spirit through the Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth. "The truth as it is in Jesus," embraces faith in His eternal oneness with the Father; His Saviour-hood; His saving, sanctifying, keeping grace; and His eternal power and Godhead.

He appeared on earth to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. By a vicarious, substitutionary death, He redeems sinners and waits to trans-form their lives by His regenerating power and grace. Christ not only lived an exemplary life, but He died a vicarious death, ransoming by His blood all who will believe the truth and be saved.

The baptism of John was of water unto repentance, answering to the first work of grace saving from the guilt of sin; but the baptism of Christ was with the Holy Spirit, answering to a second work of grace, sanctifying wholly the Christian believer and purifying his heart. The truth as it is in Christ includes the gracious fact that He engages Himself to keep every soul that commits its all to Him, and raise him up from the grave at the last day to an eternal blessedness and glory in Heaven.

Christ is the Saviour of all men, and the truth as it is in Jesus includes all who will repent and believe upon Him as their Lord, as savable. Not only is He our present Saviour, but He is our coming King. He will yet establish His kingdom on earth and provide a righteous administration over the inhabitants thereof. God speed the day when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ! Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

In conclusion, let it be said that the truth as it is in Jesus includes the forgiveness of our sins, being sanctified wholly, and preserved unto His heavenly kingdom; and to know Him aright is to know the true God and to possess eternal life.

--H.J. Felter "Pilgrim Holiness Advocate, 1938"

The Monday Morning Smile :-)

The Incomparable Christ

He came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman.  he put on humanity that we might put on divinity. He became Son of Man that we might become sons of God.  He came from Heaven, where the rivers never freeze, winds never  blow, frosts never chill the air, flowers never fade.  They never phone for a doctor for there no one is ever sick. No undertakers and no graveyards for no one ever dies--no one is ever buried.

He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, reared in obscurity; only once crossed the boundary of the land, in childhood.  He had no wealth no influence and had neither training nor education.  His relatives were inconspicuous and un-influential.

In infancy He startled a king; in boyhood He puzzled the doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature.  He walked upon the billows and hushed the sea to sleep.  He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for his services.  he never wrote a book, yet not all the libraries of the country could hold the books that could be written about Him.  He never wrote a song, yet he has furnished the theme of more songs than all song writers combined.  He never founded a college yet all the schools together cannot boast of the many students as he has.  He never practiced medicine, and yet he healed more broken hearts than the doctors have broken bodies.

He never marshaled an army, drafted a soldier, nor fired a gun, yet no leader ever made more volunteers who have, under His orders, made rebels stack arms or surrender without a shot being fired.

He is the Star of Astronomy, the Rock of Geology, the Lion and the Lamb of Zoology, the Harmonizer of all discords and the healer of all diseases.  Great men have come and gone, yet He lives on.  Herod could not kill him, Satan could not seduce Him, Death could not destroy Him, the grave could not hold Him.

He laid aside His purple robe for a peasant's gown.  He was rich, yet for our sake He became poor.  How poor?  Ask Mary!  Ask the Wise Men!  He slept in another's manger.  He cruised the lake in another's boat.  He rode on another man's donkey.  He was buried in another man's tomb.  All failed but He never.  The ever Perfect One--He is the Chief among ten thousand.  He is altogether lovely.

-Unknown.

Praying Always

Praying Always

Pray when the morning breaketh, 

Pray when the sun is high,

Pray when the shadows falling 

Tell that the eve is nigh.

Pray when the darkness deepens,

Pray in the silent night,

Pray when the shadows fleeing 

Break into morning light.

Pray for the sorrow-laden, 

Pray for the tempted soul,

Pray for the saint, the faithful, 

Pressing toward the goal.

Pray for the missionaries 

Toiling beyond the deep,

Pray for the heathen millions; 

Over them pray and weep.

Pray that the truth triumphant 

Over the wrong may win;

Pray for reign of power 

Crushing the monster Sin.

Pray for the Bridegroom's coming, 

Surely twill not be long.

Prayer, then, shall turn to shouting 

And to the victor's song.

—B. S.

I Love My Life "The Monday Morning Smile :-)"