A Compilation of Contemplations

1. The Highest Expression of Faith

2. It’s a matter of the Heart

3. God’s Power Perfected in Weakness

4. The Old Nature in the Believer

5. Columbus the Believer

6. Trials Are Only Temporary

7. Days of Heaven on Earth

The Highest Expression Of Faith

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

In Rom. 8:26 we read what our hearts must often confess to be true:

“…We know not what we should pray for as we ought…”

But the Apostle hastens to explain that the Spirit makes intercession for us according to the will of God, adding:

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom.8:28).

Believers may not receive whatever they ask for in the darkness of this age, but

“God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (II Cor. 9:8).

We may not receive whatever we ask for, but by His grace we may have so much more than this, that the Apostle, in contemplating it, breaks forth in a doxology:

“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

“Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Eph. 3:20,21).

In the light of all this the highest expression of faith today is found in the words of Paul in Phil. 4:6,7:

“Be careful [anxious] for nothing — but in everything — by prayer and supplication — with thanksgiving— let your requests be made known unto God —and…”

“And” what?

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive”?

NO!!

“…and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep [garrison] your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

It’s a Matter of the Heart

by Pastor John Fredericksen

In recent months, my wife’s father has had a series of issues with his heart that required different pacemakers to be implanted. After two previous by-pass operations, there have been justifiable reasons to be concerned about him. So, when we see or call him, we frequently ask,“How is your heart today?”

The condition of one’s heart is just as important in the spiritual realm as it is in the physical realm. It is for this reason the Scriptures say so much about the heart and why Solomon wrote, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23). The spiritual condition of one’s heart will determine how one responds to the Lord and, ultimately, it will have a huge impact on each of us in eternity.

Since God is “not willing that any should perish” (II Pet. 3:9) and“lighteth [or draws to Himself] every man that cometh into the world”(John 1:9), everyone has the option to be saved from eternal punishment. The Lord seeks with every individual to do what He did with Lydia, “whose heart the Lord opened” (Acts 16:14): drawing him or her to a personal decision of saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. However, because many resist and refuse this internal wooing of the Lord, they remain as some to whom Paul wrote in the Roman epistle: “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and… righteous judgment of God” (Rom. 2:5).

Thankfully, many choose to open their hearts to the salvation God offers. Countless numbers of people have “call[ed] on the Lord out of a pure heart” (II Tim. 2:22). Hosts of believers today seek to leave behind the regular practice of sin because they “have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom. 6:17). On a daily basis, most believers pursue a walk that will please the Lord because “in singleness of heart, fearing God…[they choose to] serve the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:22-24). Many believers are “doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph. 6:6). Those who choose such a path do so because they are choosing to “keep their heart with all diligence.” They do so by regularly taking in the Word of God and applying proper truth to the way they live each day.

It is, of course, possible for a believer to choose a path of sinful living. Every believer can choose to allow his heart to grow cold to the things of the Lord. For those who do, the Apostle Paul warned that, while still saved, they could reach a spiritual condition of “having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God… because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18). Such a condition is the spiritual equivalent of a blockage to the heart. Knowing that as believers“we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ… [and] every one of us shall give an account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:10,12), it behooves every believer to maintain a soft, responsive heart to the Lord.

Dear believer, how is your heart today, in a spiritual sense?If you have made past decisions of sinfulness that have hardened your heart, you can choose to open the door of your heart and begin to live for the Lord again. You can begin today. You can begin to read the Scriptures again, talk to the Lord in prayer, and seek a church where the truths of God’s Word are faithfully taught. If your heart has been faithfully following the Lord, “Praise His Name.” May we all seek to apply the wise counsel from Solomon to “keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

God’s Power Perfected In Weakness

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

To Paul was committed the greatest revelation of all time. He was divinely commissioned to proclaim the glorious all-sufficiency of Christ’s redemptive work. He made known God’s offer of salvation by free grace to all who trust in Christ, along with their heavenly position, blessings and prospect in Christ.

Lest he should become puffed up by the glory of these great truths, God gave him what he called “a thorn in the flesh,” an aggravating physical infirmity of some sort. “For this thing,” he says,“I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me” (II Cor. 12:8). But the Lord knew better than Paul what was good for him:

“And He said unto me. My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (Ver. 9).

How right God was! Every Christian knows that with brimming health and“good fortune” comes the tendency to forget our need of Him, while infirmity causes us to lean harder and to pray more, and this is where our spiritual power lies. Every believer should acknowledge this and say with Paul:

“Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities… for when I am weak, then am I strong”(Vers. 9,10).

Infirmities of the flesh are common even among God’s choicest saints. What satisfaction there is, then, in resting upon God’s Word:“My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The Old Nature In The Believer

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

The believer who would be truly spiritual must recognize  the presence of the old nature within. It would be dangerous not to recognize a foe so near.

The old nature in the believer is that which is“begotten  of the flesh.” It is called, “the flesh,” “the old man,” “the  natural man,” “the carnal mind.”

Just as “they that are in the flesh cannot please God”  (Rom. 8:8) so that which is of the flesh, in the believer,  cannot please God. “The flesh,” as we have already seen,  is totally depraved. God calls it “sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3),  warns that it seeks “occasion” to do wrong (Gal. 5:13), and  declares that “the works of the flesh” are all bad (Gal. 5: 19-21).

Nor is the old nature in the believer one which improves  by its contact with the new. It is with respect to “the flesh”  in the believer, even in himself that the Apostle declares  that in it“dwelleth no good thing” (Rom. 7:18), that it is “carnal, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14), that it is “corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (Eph. 4:22), that it is at “enmity against God,” and is “not subject to the law of God,  neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7).

“The flesh,” even as it remains in the believer after salvation, is that which was generated by a fallen begetter. It is the old Adamic nature. It is sinful in itself. It cannot be improved. It cannot be changed. “That which is born [begotten] of the flesh is flesh,” said our Lord (John 3:6), and it is as impossible to improve the “old man” in the believer as it was to make him acceptable to God in the first place.

The “old man” was condemned and dealt with judicially  at the Cross. Never once is the believer instructed to try to  do anything with him or to make anything of him, but  always to“reckon” him “dead indeed” (Rom. 6:11), and to “put him off” (Col. 3:8-10).

Columbus The Believer

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

Everybody knows that Columbus discovered America, but few people know Columbus the sincere believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, who braved the dangers of the ocean vastness mainly because it was his deep desire to bring the gospel to the Indies. His perseverance in the face of almost insurmountable odds should be a lesson to God’s people. Centuries before Columbus, Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers:

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (I Cor. 15:58).

This stirring appeal of Paul to Christians everywhere (I Cor. 1:2), implies that there is a tendency to abandon the work of the Lord through discouragement or carelessness, for he pleads with us to be“steadfast,” and “unmovable” — not easily shaken, reminding us that our “labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

How we need the exhortation!

We do not soon abandon our businesses or our homes. We work on in spite of difficulties and obstacles, and when the outlook is darkest we often toil the hardest. Sometimes our bodies suffer for it, but we do not immediately give up.

If this is so where our own affairs are concerned, how much more should it be so where the things of God and the needy multitudes about us are concerned! If it is so where temporal matters are concerned, how much more should it be so where eternity is involved!

Christians, let us awake! Let us “buy up the time!” Life is too short to fritter away the precious moments. Let us rather neglect our own affairs than to neglect the work of the Lord and the perishing souls about us.

Trials Are Only Temporary

By A.W. Tozer

Days of Heaven on Earth

By A.B. Simpson

Nehemiah gives us a graphic picture concerning what took place during the celebration of their glorious Feast of Tabernacles. Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared . . . neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

How many there are on every side for whom nothing is prepared! Let us find some sad and needy heart whom there is no one else to think of or care for. Let us pray for someone who has none to pray for him. Let us be like Him who,  came to a world that would not appreciate Him, to be rejected and finally murdered.

Let us not be afraid to know something even of the love that is unrequited and is thrown away on the unworthy. That is the love of Christ, and God has for such love a rich recompense.

How Christ must weep over the selfishness that meets Him from those for whom He died!