“The Scriptures are not geared to frivolity. No great revival ever started in fun. The gospel is not a funeral, but neither is it a frolic—it is a feast.”
~Vance Havner
“I have been blessed by the story of the converted drunkard who was asked, “Do you believe that Jesus changed water into wine?” “Yes,” he replied, “I have seen Him change whiskey into groceries and gambling tickets into furniture and a broken-hearted wife into a radiant Christian. I have no difficulty believing He changed water into wine!”
~Vance Havner
The Divine Inscrutability
By A.W. Tozer
Christian theology teaches that God in His essential nature is both inscrutable and ineffable. This by simple definition means that He is incapable of being searched into or understood, and that He cannot tell forth or utter what He is. This inability lies not in God but in the limitations of our creaturehood. “Why inquirest thou after my name, for it is secret?” Only God knows God in any final meaning of the word know. “Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.”
To the average Christian today this may sound strange, if not downright confusing, for the temper of religious thinking in our times is definitely not theological. We may live out a full lifetime and die without once having our minds challenged by the sweet mystery of the Godhead if we depend upon the churches to do the challenging. They are altogether too busy playing with shadows and getting “adjusted” to one thing and another to spend much time thinking about God. It might be well, therefore, to consider for a moment longer the divine inscrutability.
Verse
“Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.” Judges 13:18
Thought
We may live out a full lifetime and die without once having our minds challenged by the sweet mystery of the Godhead if we depend upon the churches to do the challenging.
Prayer
Let us, Father, not be concerned about being “adjusted” to the latest trends. Instead let us devoted to knowing more of You.
We Can Do Anything through God
January 13, 2015
But Moses said to the LORD, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?” — Exodus 6:30
This Torah portion for this week is Va’eira, which means “and I appeared,” from Exodus 6:2–9:35, and the Haftorah is from Ezekiel 28:25–29:21.
Have you ever wondered why when God needed a leader unlike any that the world had ever seen, He turned to the verbally challenged Moses? We might have thought that God would have called on someone like a Martin Luther King Jr., who could turn out a passionate speech like “I Have a Dream.” Or God could have picked a witty Winston Churchill type or a charismatic John F. Kennedy-like leader. But God turned instead to the humble and meek Moses, who said, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?”
Basically, Moses was saying, “I am totally unfit for this job! I lack the talent and ability to fulfill the mission! Why God would you pick me?” And yet, as so often happens, that is exactly how God works.
Think about it. God chose David, a young shepherd boy who was too small to even wear King Saul’s armor, to slaughter the giant Goliath. God chose Joseph, the most hated of his brothers, a slave, and then a prison inmate, to become the Prime Minister of Egypt and provide for his entire family. God chose Jael, a young woman, to slaughter the mighty warrior Sisera when the entire army of Israel had failed to do so. He chose Esther, an orphaned Jewish girl in exile, to become the Queen of Persia and save her people, Israel.
God often chooses individuals who seem the most unlikely candidates to fill the most important roles. He does this because He wants us to know that it’s not our talents and abilities that determine the outcomes, but His will and His miracles that bring about salvation. As we read in Zechariah 4:6, “’Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.”
In 1948, when the United Nations voted to reinstate the state of Israel, the fledgling country, made up at the time mostly of refugees and Holocaust survivors, was attacked by five organized Arab armies. Yet, Israel was victorious. Israel, the modern-day David, slew the modern-day Goliath. Israel accomplished what no one expected. Everyone predicted a slaughter. They were already digging the graves of the new Israelis. But God’s will prevailed, Israel prevailed, and Israel will continue to prevail because of God’s will.
I want to encourage us all today not to be intimidated by a task that seems too large. When God calls us to do something, don’t look at what you lack. Don’t be scared off by what you “can’t” do. Through God, we can do anything and be anything. God chooses the willing, not necessarily the able. He has chosen and promoted many imperfect people in the past – and He can choose us, too.
With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
Stopping Short of God
By Vance Havner
O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.
Psalm 63:1
Any spiritual exercise that stops short of God Himself stops far too short. We can become taken up with the means and forget the end. Our Bible reading may bring us profit and we may lay down the Book with a comfortable sense of duty well performed, but does the heart say, “Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord”? Prayer is but a means to an end: we may get a secret satisfaction out of praying that makes prayer only an end in itself. “Early will I seek thee” – that is true prayer. “Now thee alone I seek, give what is best.” Faith has no value save as it links us with God. Yet we often become taken up with our faith and miss God entirely.
Feelings, experiences, meditation, reading, church attendance, with all these we may stop short of God, finding some satisfaction but letting the good rob us of the best – Himself. The Psalmist said, “My soul thirsteth…my flesh longeth for thee.” Only God can meet the need of the whole man.
“We are not called to spread a rumor. We are called to proclaim a double event—that Christ died and rose again.”
~Vance Havner
Spiritless Christianity
By A.W. Tozer
I suppose my suggestion will not receive much serious attention, but I should like to suggest that we Bible-believing Christians announce a moratorium on religious activity and set our house in order preparatory to the coming of an afflatus from above. So carnal is the body of Christians that composes the conservative wing of the Church, so shockingly irreverent are our public services in some quarters, so degraded are our religious tastes in still others, that the need for power could scarcely have been greater at any time in history. I believe we should profit immensely were we to declare a period of silence and self-examination during which each one of us searched his own heart and sought to meet every condition for a real baptism of power from on high.
We may be sure of one thing, that for our deep trouble there is no cure apart from a visitation, yes, an invasion of power from above. Only the Spirit Himself can show us what is wrong with us and only the Spirit can prescribe the cure. Only the Spirit can save us from the numbing unreality of Spiritless Christianity. Only the Spirit can show us the Father and the Son. Only the inworking of the Spirit’s power can discover to us the solemn majesty and the heart ravishing mystery of the Triune God.
Verse
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3
Thought
So carnal is the body of Christians that composes the conservative wing of the Church, so shockingly irreverent are our public services in some quarters, so degraded are our religious tastes in still others, that the need for power could scarcely have been greater at any time in history.
Prayer
Holy Spirit, come and show us where we err and what we need for a cure. Indeed, show us Christ Himself and God,
The Great Need
By A.W. Tozer
This is not all, but it will give a fair idea of what is meant when the New Testament speaks of power, and perhaps by contrast we may learn how little of the power we enjoy.
I think there can be no doubt that the need above all other needs in the Church of God at this moment is the power of the Holy Spirit. More education, better organization, finer equipment, more advanced methods—all are unavailing. It is like bringing a better Pulmotor after the patient is dead. Good as these things are they can never give life. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth.” Good as they are they can never bring power. “Power belongeth unto God.” Protestantism is on the wrong road when it tries to win merely by means of a “united front.” It is not organizational unity we need most; the great need is power. The headstones in the cemetery present a united front, but they stand mute and helpless while the world passes by.
Verse
The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. John 6:63
Thought
I think there can be no doubt that the need above all other needs in the Church of God at this moment is the power of the Holy Spirit.
Prayer
Holy Father, we don’t need more of this world; we need power, power that only Your Spirit can bring.
Sand or Seed
By Vance Havner
Faith as a grain of mustard seed.
Matthew 17:20
If you would develop a living faith, not like a grain of sand but like a grain of seed, do not read too many books on faith. One dear brother will tell you that you must agonize and strive to enter, while another would have you “take it by faith.” Both are right: you must mean business and be in dead earnest, but beyond that you must, like Hudson Taylor, quit working at your faith and rest in the Faithful one.
Books on faith are colored by the author’s temperament, theology, experience, style of expression. You can become more concerned about the quantity and quality of your faith than about its object. You never will get your experience to suit you. You will never pray just as you want to, or feel or preach or live just as you want to. Perfection is found only in Him.
Real faith stops studying itself and is occupied with Him. Quit digging in the ashes of your poor heart for satisfaction. Consider Him-not your faith- “lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.”
Come and Drink
By Vance Havner
My soul thirsteth.
Psalm 63:1
If any man thirst…
John 7:37
“But how can my thirsting soul find God? He is too abstract, I can form no mental picture of Him. How can I drink of the Living Water?”
That is why Jesus came. In Him the Word became flesh. No man comes to the Father but by Him, and whosoever comes to Him will in no wise be cast out.
“If any man thirst, let Him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.” Thirsting, coming, drinking, believing, overflowing—the thirsting soul comes and receives and believes that it has received (Mk. 11:24). The overflowing is a natural – a supernatural – consequence – “shall flow.”
A little tenement child in a hospital, presented with a large glass of cool, rich milk, asked hesitantly, “How deep may I drink?” Drink deeply of the Living Water!
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.
The Good Old Days
By Vance Havner
Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
2 Kings 2:14
Elisha did not ask for the return of Elijah or sigh for the good old days of Elijah. Some of us are like Saul trying to call up departed Samuels. “What would Moody do today? Oh, for the times we used to have!”
A subscriber wrote to a magazine editor, “Your magazine is not as good as it used to be.” The editor replied, “It never has been.” The times have never been as good as they used to be! The Early Church, fresh from Pentecost, had barely started, when “‘there arose a murmuring.” Look at Corinth! Don’t forget Ananias and Sapphira, the Galatians and Colossians, Euodia and Syntyche, the plight of Ephesus, Sardis, Laodicea. It has always been so, yet God has carried on.
Looking back to the good old days is not the way out. Looking up to the God of All the Days is.
Elijah goes, but “thou, O Lord, remainest.”
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