“The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.”
To me one of the major tragedies of the hour, and especially in the realm of the church, is that most of the time seems to be taken up by the leaders in preaching about unity instead of preaching the gospel that alone can produce unity.
Today i’m editing audio interviews Sarah has recorded for the latest CD version of RNIB’s Outlook magazine. As i was using the automation tool (see above) to boost a part of Sarah’s voice, i instantly thought of the still small voice of God speaking to Elijah.
12 and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
I started thinking that its so easy for us to try and amplify the “still small voice” to align it with our noisy and busy lives, to try and keep doing everything we want to do and God will bless it anyway. We become so arrogant in our will, that we think we can manipulate God into fitting in (and agreeing) with our purpose driven lives, after all we are doing it for Him aren’t we?!
Are you bombarding God with foolish rantings, or are you ready to slow down and listen to His still small voice?
“When believers have a low view of God, everything focuses on meeting felt needs within the body of Christ. When the church adopts such a perspective, it often offers people nothing more than spiritual placebos. It centers on psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, and a myriad of other diversions to attempt to meet perceived and felt needs.”
It is not a true Gospel that gives us the impression that the Christian life is easy, and that there are no problems to be faced. That is not the New Testament teaching. The New Testament is most alarming at first, indeed terrifying, as it shows us the problems by which we are confronted. But follow it-go on! It does not stop halfway, it goes on to this addition, this second half; and here it shows us the way in which, though that is the truth concerning the battle, we can be enabled to wage it, and not only to wage it, but to triumph in it. It shows us that we are meant to be “more than conquerors.”
Life is not life without God by our side. He is the reason why we are alive. He is everything. Offer your prayer of thanks, and stay full with God’s love.
Heavenly Father, We think we are ready for Christmas …Not because we have read the pages of the Bible, but because we have read our credit card statements, And they say that we have left no stone unturned, and no gift unbought, if still unpaid for. We stand ready to stagger under the weight of Christmas, To eat and drink far too much, To party with the best of them, And to worry all the time that we’ve forgotten something. And we’ll do it all, not always because we want to, but because everyone else is doing it, and we’ll go along for the ride.
Somewhere in all of this, Father, please feel free to stop us. Any place, any time, just stop us in our tracks. Stop us, grab our attention, and then place your gift in our hands where we can see it, And in our hearts where we can feel it. The gift of knowing that, a little over two thousand years ago, you stepped into the history of this world and placed yourself in a manger in a dirty backstreet stable, And called yourself a Christ-Child. It was then that we could see you and understand you as we had never been able to do before: As Creator, as Spirit, and as a man who would walk unerringly towards a Cross.
Everything else, all the food, the fun, the partying, none of it matters, and none of it has any point at all, unless we grasp this simple, beautiful gift and press it close to our hearts and keep it there…..….. that we live with you, that we are one with you, Our Lord Immanuel.
The church is always to be under the Word; she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word the church becomes something very different. We must always keep the church under the Word.
Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses decay, the world changes. One alone is true to us; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our need.
A couple of weeks ago, Paul (one of our preachers) asked if i’d like to share a song that’s on my heart before his sermon (which was yesterday). It’s not a full band song, but one where i accompany a single singer, a prayerful and reflective song. My first thoughts were “Oh yeah i’d love to go up to the front and terrify myself while i share some words and try to play a song”. So i said “Yes i’d love too”. He said “Great, the theme is unity”.
As i went away i said “Wow, thank you Lord” as for nearly 2 months now i’ve been doing a personal daily expositional bible study on Ephesians 4 & 5, which is all about unity. Verses suddenly flooded my mind about unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace, unity in the faith, unity in the body and on and on they came. I started getting excited and thought instead of sharing a song, i’d share all of the things i’d been learning for about 6 hours instead! lol. 🙂
Then the more sobering verses and thoughts came along…
“If we are without Hope and without God (Ephesians 2:12), and if we are not growing in the knowledge and understanding of Christ, if Jesus isn’t the head, and if He is not leading the way, then unity is IMPOSSIBLE!” Jesus who is The Way, The Truth and The Life, simply said “FOLLOW ME!”.
✞ Song “The Simple Way” by Sara Sargent
I then went to ask my loving sister in Christ Sara if she would bless us with her beautiful voice while i accompany her on acoustic guitar, and to maybe show me some of the songs she had written but kept quiet. So last week Sara came and showed me “The Simple Way”, wow! 🙂
This is a short section of the song which i recorded on my iPhone as i was learning the guitar chords. The quality isn’t brilliant, but i hope you too are blessed by Sara’s beautiful voice.
See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
“The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man’s troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
It is easy to follow a person’s footprints if we walk close behind him, but if we walk some distance back, we might fail to see them as clearly. Similarly, if we follow close after the Lord, we would easily see the footsteps along the way, but if we try to follow afar off, we would find it difficult to know the path of His will.
“There is nothing which I know of which is more unscriptural, and which is more dangerous to the soul, than to divide doctrine from life… The reason for this is that if your life and your mode of living is not the outcome of your doctrine, it is not Christian living; it is something else.”
“Too often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.
We need to brace ourselves up and to realize that we are responsible for thoughts, attitudes, and actions. We need to reckon on the fact that we died to sin’s reign, that it no longer has any dominion over us, that God has united us with the risen Christ in all His power and has given us the Holy Spirit to work in us. Only as we accept our responsibility and appropriate God’s provisions will we make any progress in our pursuit of holiness.”
23 Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.
“To make it quite practical I have a very simple test. After I have explained the way of Christ to somebody I say “Now, are you ready to say that you are a Christian?” And they hesitate. And then I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you hesitating?” And so often people say, “I don’t feel like I’m good enough yet. I don’t think I’m ready to say I’m a Christian now.” And at once I know that I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, “Well, I don’t think I’ good enough,” but it’s a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying, “I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,” you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell. It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure
What could I do to leave a legacy? How can I speak with authority When I can’t see You, I can’t see You How can I know the dreams You have for me? How can I believe beyond what I have seen? When I can’t hear You, I can’t feel You now No, no, no
[Chorus:] You’re my revival song, You start where I belong On my knees, on my knees When I am weak or strong You meet me here When I’m on my knees, on my knees Oh, it starts with me
Why do I try to work outside of You? Knocking down doors I should be going through But I’m so tired, I’m so tired You take my burdens off of my shoulders You break the lies that hold me back I’m not sure enough
I really wanna change the world I really wanna sing Your song But I know revival’s got to start with me I really wanna change the world I really wanna sing Your song But I know revival’s got to start with me
A corner office was his dream More like a prison now it seems Somewhere on the corporate climb He left his warrior behind Now hes just a worker at a daily grind Steals his years and numbs his mind His strength is fading, his dreams are blind This is not the life he had in mind
She lies awake cause hes up all night Staring at a screen that tells him lies That the grass is greener on the other side So shes at the gym fighting off the years To be young again and calm her fears That shell never be enough for him Just as a young man catches her eye
Now they’re trapped in their own worlds, in their own wars With their cell phones and the closed doors Its funny how quiet and peaceful that it seems But they’re all alone together In the house of their dreams
Little sister, shes a sixteen-year-old princess Lost somewhere between the swing set And her brand new crushs chariot awaits And big brothers rooms glowing with trophies that shout his name But he’d trade all his high school fame For some backyard catch with his hero again
So now they’re all dressed up in Sunday best Sit up straight just like the rest And they sing the songs of peace and rest that Jesus freely gives And then their kids look up as daddy stands And he takes his bride with trembling hands Brother kneels at his fathers side as princess looks in the mothers eyes Their tears tear down the walls as daddy prays
Were trapped in our own worlds and our own wars With our cell phones and our closed doors God, only You can save our family And on this Rock, well build On this Rock, well build The house of our dreams
“Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.
It is not enough to just say relationships are important; we must prove it by investing time in them. Words alone are worthless. “My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action.” Relationships take time and effort, and the best way to spell love is “T-I-M-E.”
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
“The Church has been trying to preach morality and ethics without the Gospel as a basis; it has been preaching morality without godliness; and it simply does not work. It never has done, and it never will. And the result is that the Church, having abandoned her real task, has left humanity more or less to its own devices.”
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
“It must be the rain knocking the smell out of it”
My lovely wife Sarah
Sarah & were walking home from town in the pouring rain this afternoon, and as we walked past the lovely lavender plant which is on the wall of a nearby house, we were gifted with a beautiful scent of this lovely plant.
Sarah then said “It must be the rain knocking the smell out of it“
After a little chuckle i said “lol, yeah doesn’t that remind you a little of the Christian walk? The Holy Spirit spends our whole lives trying to knock the smell (the amazing fragrance of Grace) of of us!” 🙂
“In teaching people what it means to be a Christian, we spend much of our time and effort bringing them to a point of belief without clearly calling them to follow. We have taken “believe” and we have written that in capital letters with bold print: BELIEVE. But everything that has to do with following has been put in small print: follow.”
“Jesus doesn’t hold back with Nicodemus.
Following Jesus would require a commitment that would cost Nicodemus a great deal….In fact, it’s true throughout all of Scripture….Following Jesus isn’t something you can do at night where no one notices. It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That’s not the small-print–that’s a guarantee.”
Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus
“If we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that He came into this world and went to the cross of Calvary and died for our sins and rose again in order to justify us and to give us life anew and prepare us for heaven-if you really believe that, there is only one inevitable deduction, namely that He is entitled to the whole of our lives, without any limit whatsoever.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
“It is amazing how little we know about ourselves. God has to take us through all kinds of failures to reveal the self-focused pride that lies dormant in the corners or our character.
The only way we can be of any use to God is to respond with discernment to our disappointments. Discernment leads us to truth- and the truth punctures our pride, all for His purpose of molding us to the image of His Son.”
For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths.
This Proverb instantly reminded me of how alert Bruce used to be. If you tried to sneak anywhere (no matter how quiet you think you’re being) he’s stood watching you! 😀
⇧ Bruce catching me thinking i’m sneaking up the stairs while he’s asleep! ⇧
“What most of us do not realize is that we are being transformed in our thinking all the time—either by the world’s value system or by the truth of God’s Word. The world’s values bombard us daily with thousands of messages on billboards, in movies, songs, video games, and television programs that all reinforce a worldview that tells me life is about “me.” Life is about what I can get, what I can achieve, who I can impress, what I can possess, where I live, what I drive, how much education I have, how much money I make, who knows my name, and how successful I am . . . and the list goes on. By contrast, God uses His Spirit, His Word, nature, great books, and the authentic community of fellow believers to remind us that life is about “Him.” And life in Christ is all about what I can give, who I can love, how God can use me, how significant and accepted I am regardless of what I make, where I live, what I drive, or who knows my name.”
Chip Ingram, True Spirituality: Becoming a Romans 12 Christian
He cries in the corner where nobody sees He’s the kid with the story no one would believe He prays every night, “Dear God won’t you please Could you send someone here who will love me?”
Who will love me for me Not for what I have done or what I will become Who will love me for me ‘Cause nobody has shown me what love What love really means
Her office is shrinking a little each day She’s the woman whose husband has run away She’ll go to the gym after working today Maybe if she was thinner Then he would’ve stayed And she says:
Who will love me for me? Not for what I have done or what I will become Who will love me for me? ‘Cause nobody has shown me what love, what love really means
He’s waiting to die as he sits all alone He’s a man in a cell who regrets what he’s done He utters a cry from the depths of his soul “Oh Lord, forgive me, I want to go home”
Then he heard a voice somewhere deep inside And it said “I know you’ve murdered and I know you’ve lied I have watched you suffer all of your life And now that you’ll listen, I’ll tell you that I…”
I will love you for you Not for what you have done or what you will become I will love you for you I will give you the love The love that you never knew.
My past won’t stop haunting me In this prison there’s a fight between Who I am and who I used to be
This thorn in my side is a grace For because of it the flesh and blood of God Was offered in my place, my place
You fought the fight in me You chased me down and finished the race I was blind but now I see Jesus You kept the faith in me
Where did my best friends go? In my defense they disappeared Just like Your friends did to You, oh Lord
But You were there, You gave me strength So this little one might come to know The glory of Your name, Your name
You fought the fight in me You chased me down and finished the race I was blind but now I see Jesus You kept the faith in me
Awaiting, set apart like incense to Your heart A libation I’m pouring out Empty and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
You fought the fight in me You chased me down and finished the race I was blind but now I see Jesus You kept the faith in me
You fought the fight in me You chased me down and finished the race I was blind but now I see Jesus You kept the faith in me Jesus You kept the faith in me Savior, You kept the faith in me
“Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.”
You brought me this far so why would I question You now You have provided so why would I start to doubt I’ve never been stranded, abandoned or left here to fight alone So I’m giving You control
I lift my life, lift my life up I give it all in surrender I lift my heart, lift my heart up You can have it forever All my dreams, all my plans Lord I leave it in Your hands I lift my life, lift my life up
Have Your way in me Have Your way in me
If peace is a river then let it sweep over me If I’m under fire I know it’s refining me When I hear You calling out I follow now wherever the road may go I know You’re leading me home
I lift my life, lift my life up I give it all in surrender I lift my heart, lift my heart up You can have it forever All my dreams, all my plans Lord I leave it in Your hands I lift my life, lift my life up
Have Your way in me Have Your way in me
Take my life and let it be all for You Take my life and let it be all for You
I lift my life, lift my life up I give it all in surrender I lift my heart, lift my heart up (Take my life)
I lift my life, lift my life up I give it all in surrender (Take my heart) I lift my heart, lift my heart up You can have it forever All my dreams, all my plans Lord I leave it in Your hands I lift my life, lift my life up
Have Your way with me Have Your way with me Have Your way with me Have Your way with me
February 6, 2015 
iChristian 
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