I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me

Galatians 2:20

New International Version (NIV)

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

 

You Can Still Be Merry!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

You Can Still Be Merry!
by Jon Walker

“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” (Luke 2:20 NIV)

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40 Days in the Word: Learn the Word, Love the Word, LIVE the Word.
The nationwide launch of Pastor Rick’s 40 Days in the Word is coming Jan. 29. It’s not too late for your small group to get involved! Watch a three-minute video testimony of lives already being changed. Download a free sample PDF of 40 Days in the Word.

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We celebrate the birth of Jesus, and then we return to the office, to school, to the things we normally do.

Do you remember that Christmas was just a few weeks ago? (Or are you still thinking about when you’ll take down your decorations?)

The shepherds of Bethlehem returned to their fields. God had sent them to find the baby Jesus in a manger. They marveled at God and knew they’d been blessed to see the Messiah’s arrival.

And then they returned to their flocks. They returned with an energized faith, glorifying and praising God. But, still, they returned to their routine.

God takes us to the mountaintop where he shows us great miracles and wonders, but he doesn’t leave us there. It is in the fields and among the flocks that our faith grows, nurtured in the soil of the day-to-day, the mundane. This is where we die to Christ, allowing his life to blossom within us (Galatians 2:20).

You may have returned to your routine, but God wants you to know this:

• The things we truly believe emerge day-to-day. It’s the conflicts over who makes the coffee, who cleans up the mess, who gets to go home early, or who gets the biggest piece of pie that test whether it is Christ who lives in us or if we’re still saying, “No, it is I who live.”

• God wants you to succeed, and he is going to stay with you to help you get it right. As Pastor Rick often says, God is on your side. This means God’s intent is not to catch you doing something wrong; his intent is to reveal where you still need to yield to the Jesus-life growing in you.

• You can still be merry! Don’t we always point out how friendly, cordial, loving, and giving people are during the Christmas season, and then lament the fact that they aren’t like that during the rest of the year? It may be January, but you can still be friendly, cordial, loving, and giving right now. It is a choice!

Merry Christmas and a Happy Return to Routine.

Jon is managing editor of Rick Warren’s Daily Hope Devotionals and the author of Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship.” This devotional © Copyright 2012 Jon Walker. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Courage in Spite of Terrifying Circumstance

Courage in Spite of Terrifying Circumstance

Written by Sheila Schuller Coleman

"You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you." -Psalm 91:5-6, 9-10a

As a young wife and mother, I found myself terrified from time to time. There was the time when my three-and-a-half-month-old son was diagnosed with spinal meningitis. I was terrified when they wheeled him into the pediatric intensive care unit (he completely recovered - praise God!).

I was terrified when my husband and I were hit with an unexpected bill from the IRS that we did not have the money to pay. (Thankfully, we were able to get a loan and pay it off in time.)

I was terrified when my husband and sons were late coming home some evenings (prior to cell phones). I imagined them dead at the side of the road and often worked myself into nearly a panic attack.

I was terrified when I received a phone call in the middle of the night telling me my father was in a coma and in brain surgery in Amsterdam - they didn't know if he would survive and, if he did, what shape he would be in for the rest of his life.

Some of my fears were rational and some were not. Nevertheless, I learned this through the terrors that I have encountered in my lifetime: Terror is a frame of mind - not a state of being!

That means that terror is an attitude - not a circumstance. This means that terror is merely a response. I can choose how I will respond to any circumstance. I can choose courage just as I can choose terror. I can choose to cry out to God when I find myself in a terrifying circumstance. When I do, God will deliver me - and He will deliver you, too - from the terrifying feelings and the terrifying circumstances!

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PRAYER:

Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, I cry out to You when I am afraid. Deliver me from my terror and deliver me from my terrifying circumstance. You are my strong deliverer. I praise You and thank You for what You are doing for me -today and every day. Amen.

Trials and Pain: The Necessity of Wounds

December 14

Trials and Pain: The Necessity of Wounds
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word....It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. --Psalm 119:67,71
It is amazing to me! There are people within the ranks of Christianity who have been taught and who believe that Christ will shield His followers from wounds of every kind.
If the truth were known, the saints of God in every age were only effective after they had been wounded. They experienced the humbling wounds that brought contrition, compassion and a yearning for the knowledge of God. I could only wish that more among the followers of Christ knew what some of the early saints meant when they spoke of being wounded by the Holy Spirit....
In every generation, the people who have found God have been those who have come to the end of themselves. Recognizing their hopelessness, they have been ready to throw themselves on the mercy and grace of a forgiving God. Men Who Met God, pp.59,62
"Lord, don't let me waste the humbling wounds. Do Your great work within me, and help me to respond properly and learn all You want me to learn through Your working. Amen."

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Today's "Insight for Leaders" is taken by permission from the book, Tozer on Christian Leadership, published by WingSpread Publishers

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: The Seared Conscience

November 21

To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. --Titus 1:15

But when a conscience has become seared, when a man has played with the fire and burned his conscience and calloused it until he can handle the hot iron of sin without shrinking, there is no longer any safety for him.

Paul wrote in his epistle about those to whom nothing is pure any longer, "but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

Here Paul speaks of an inward corruption, revealed in impure thoughts and soiled language. I am just as afraid of people with soiled tongues as I am of those with a communicable disease.

Actually, a foul tongue is evidence of a deeper spiritual disease and Paul goes on to tell us that those with defiled consciences become reprobates, something just washed up on the shore, a moral shipwreck. Echoes from Eden, 64-65.

"Oh Lord, deliver me from that 'inward corruption.' Guard my mind and my tongue; convict me of any carelessness or straying. Keep my conscience alive and active. Lord, I really don't want to end up a dirty old man, 'washed up on the shore, a moral shipwreck.' Amen."

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Today's "Insight for Leaders" is taken by permission from the book, Tozer on Christian Leadership, published by WingSpread Publishers

Tumbalalaika – Amsterdam

This is the Sephardic Synagogue in Amsterdam. It is entirely lit by candles.

It was built several hundred years ago and never "electrified."

The arc, seats, bema, etc., were all hand-made by ship-builders.

During WW II the Nazis somehow missed it and never entered it so it is entirely intact and original.

It is a real beauty. This concert was done in the sanctuary and is very rousing.

| Tumbalalaika |

The Church: Different From the World

July 23

The Church: Different From the World

Therefore "Come out from among them and be separate," says the Lord. "Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you." --2 Corinthians 6:17

The church's mightiest influence is felt when she is different from the world in which she lives. Her power lies in her being different, rises with the degree in which she differs and sinks as the difference diminishes.

This is so fully and clearly taught in the Scriptures and so well illustrated in Church history that it is hard to see how we can miss it. But miss it we do, for we hear constantly that the Church must try to be as much like the world as possible, excepting, of course,
where the world is too, too sinful....

Let us plant ourselves on the hill of Zion and invite the world to come over to us, but never under any circumstances will we go over to them. The cross is the symbol of Christianity, and the cross speaks of death and separation, never of compromise. No one ever compromised with a cross. The cross separated between the dead and the living. The timid and the fearful will cry "Extreme!" and they will be right. The cross is the essence of all that is extreme and final. The message of Christ is a call across a gulf from death to life, from sin to righteousness and from Satan to God. The Set of the Sail, 35,36.

"Lord, help me to be willing to be different. Forgive me for the sin
of blending in. I pray that our neighbors would see something
different in our church and our people and be drawn to the Savior. Amen."

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Today's "Insight for Leaders" is taken by permission from the book, Tozer on Christian Leadership, published by WingSpread Publishers