Living a Dedicated Christian Life

by Pastor John Fredericksen

Why do missionaries leave their families and native country to labor in distant lands?  Why do Christian workers (teachers, secretaries, etc.) labor in ministries instead of working in higher paying positions in the world?  Why do most believers cheerfully give from their income to the local church when they could spend it on things of pleasure?  Why do Sunday School and Bible teachers sacrifice their time to prepare for their ministry to the saints instead of using that time for leisure?  Why do so many believers make it a priority to set aside time to consistently be in Bible class, the preaching hour, and mid-week prayer and study services when they could choose to spend this time at work or play?

The answer to the above questions is found in II Corinthians 4:18: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”  You see, a truly spiritually minded believer does NOT simply live for this life alone.  Instead, he weighs his present actions and choices from a heavenly and eternal perspective of gain or loss.  He is able to look at today’s time, ministry, finances, and choices as an opportunity to invest in eternal future reward, and he is motivated to do so with consistency, diligence, and joy.

How have you been looking at your life?  Have you been only looking at the “things which are seen,” or have you been looking at, and valuing most highly, the things which are eternal?  This may be a good day to change focus and priority.

Love-Impelled Invasion

By A.W. Tozer

On Planning Your Peniel

By Vance Havner

And Jacob was left alone and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
Genesis 32:24

It is not in some favored vacation spot, where the setting seems perfect, that we have our best season with the Lord. We do not find our Bethels where we recharge our spiritual batteries in some ideal retreat. It was in desperate loneliness at Jabbok that Jacob met the Lord and gained power with God and men. At the backside of the desert Moses came to the mountain of God. It was in the year that King Uzziah died that Isaiah saw the Lord. Do not forget that John wrote Revelation on Patmos, that Pilgrim’s Progress came from Bedford jail, and precious hymns from Fanny Crosby’s blindness.

Our choicest art and literature came out of poverty and suffering, and God does His best work with us oftimes when it seems that the time and place are most unpropitious. We do not come to know the deeper things by rocking on the porch or some lazy rest spot, sipping lemonade, reading a novel.

You cannot set the stage and arrange the scenery and then work up the experience you need-have it made to order. The Spirit does not work that way. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” It may be in the unlikeliest place and on the darkest day when you are “left alone” that God will come down to wrestle until daybreak.

The Wonder Cure

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

Most of us remember the drugstore product which swept the country like wildfire years ago and netted one man more than $3,000,000.00 in one year. It was called Hadacol. Whatever was wrong with you, Hadacol could cure it! Radio commercials and newspaper advertisements acclaimed its healing powers. Some small drugstores displayed signs over their doors reading, “MAIN ENTRANCE FOR HADACOL.”

One humorous story was told at that time about a woman who was supposed to have testified over the radio: “Before I began taking Hadacol I couldn’t read nor write; now I’m teaching high school!”

Some people seem to think that Christianity is like Hadacol was supposed to be. In fact, some evangelists give the erroneous impression that if one accepts Christ everything will suddenly go right. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Christian life is a battle, and we cannot win this battle without much diligent, earnest Bible study and prayer. In fact, it is this battle that makes the Christian life rewarding. Formerly we were “taken captive by [the devil] at his will” (II Timothy 2:26), but now God provides us with complete armor, including “the sword of the Spirit” and “the shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16,17), and says, “Stand fast.” Indeed, James 4:7 says: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

God has enlisted every true believer in His “armed forces,” as it were, and He encourages us each one to be “a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (II Timothy 2:3). Indeed, He expects this of each corporate assembly of believers as well, for Paul, by divine inspiration, wrote to the Philippian saints:

“Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians1:27).

Like an Olive Tree

December 7, 2014

But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever. — Psalm 52:8

I was recently thinking about two incidents that occurred in Israel on the same day this year. One was reported widely by the media, and the other went mostly unnoticed. The first event was a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. An Arab motorist plowed his vehicle through a group of innocent people waiting at a train stop. He killed one person and seriously injured several more.

After slamming into a second group of civilians, the terrorist emerged with a metal bar and began beating innocent men, women, and children until, thank God, security forces were able to neutralize him. My friend commented, “What kind of human being wakes up in the morning and plans to kill and maim as many innocent people as possible?”

The second event that occurred was very different. I received an e-mail from a man who, later that same night, was on Jerusalem’s light rail. He noticed that one of the security men on the train had two large thermoses and a bunch of hot cups. At each stop, the man would fill the cups and hand them to the other security men working the nightshift on each platform. Quietly, that man warmed many bodies and even more hearts on that cold autumn night.

In Psalm 52, David addressed another cruel man. David wrote this psalm when Doeg, one of King Saul’s officers, informed the king that the city of Nob, under the leadership of Ahimelek, had given David refuge. David was a wanted man by Saul, and so Saul had the entire city wiped out. Doeg and his men slaughtered an entire city of innocent men, women, and children. In the psalm, David wondered how Doeg could be so proud of his actions, calling Doeg a man who loved evil.

David concluded the psalm by saying, “But I am like an olive tree.” An olive tree is firmly rooted in its place. It quietly provides shade and its fruit gives forth nourishment; as oil, it gives off warmth and light. No matter how evil the people around David became, he vowed to remain firmly rooted in the Lord. No matter what else was happening around him, David would continue to extend a hand of peace and to behave toward others with kindness.

Friends, David’s response to senseless cruelty must be ours as well. Like the man on the train, we must be beacons of light in a dark world. Today, let’s each do one extra act of kindness. No matter what anyone else may do today, we must continue to be like an olive tree – ceaselessly providing shelter, nourishment, warmth, and light, wherever we may go.

With prayers for shalom, peace,

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein