JESUS NEEDS A FEW GOOD FOLKS TOO

JESUS NEEDS A FEW GOOD FOLKS TOO

By Richard Lineberry

Three military recruiters were speaking at a special gathering in a college campus. There were recruiters from the Army, Navy, and Marines. Each had been given ten minutes to make their pitch to hearers about how their respective branch of service would be the best for these adventurous young men and women. They had been warned to be faithful to their ten minute limit lest they cheat the others out of theirs.

Sure enough the Army and Navy guys both went over leaving only two minutes for the Marine recruiter to speak. Frustrated, he just sat there and looked at the crowd in silence for the first minute then stood up and said, “I doubt whether there are but two or three of you in this whole room who are cut out for the Marines but I want you to come talk to me after this is over.” As you might expect, when things were over the Marine recruiter was flooded with interested takers. Jesus knew that heroic commitment comes from a heroic dimension of the human heart.

Believe it or not, Jesus calls on that same deep area in us. If you make small demands of people, you get small commitments. Jesus, however, demands our all. With that challenge, church history is full of heroes of the faith, who, through God’s power, did marvelous things and changed their world.

To know that God wants my all strikes a chord in me that says, “How can I give less than everything?” That’s exactly what He gave for me with the giving of His Son.

As we enter into His presence this morning, let’s answer the call with all of our hearts. If we do, He will surprise us with great things!

Grace be to all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with a love incorruptible. Ephesians 6:24

Release the Secret Weapon

RELEASE THE SECRET WEAPON

By Dwight Cunkle

In this dark world there is light giving hope in the midst of previously hidden fears and shame. Sean Larkin encouraged us as individuals and as a church to open the closet where we feel skeletons must exist.
But there is nothing there-only the lies, distortions and darkness of the enemy.
Our offenses lose their snare (toward individuals or the church as in discipleship or the faith movement etc), our failures lose their shame (we are accepted in the Beloved together), and our present weaknesses lose their sting (fear of being rejected if we confess our struggles).
How is this happening?
Ladies are sharing testimonies and men are confessing sins.

Love covers a multitude of sins. Confess your faults and pray for one another that you may be healed. If we walk in the light as he is in the light the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
They overcame the accuser by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives unto death.

God creates a safe place, a grace empowered place, and He becomes a healing stream if we continue to practice honest love one to another. This opens heaven and God releases us from closed ears and unseeing eyes of unbelief and dullness. We can hear His voice and be healed. We can change. Then signs and wonders and social transformation sill follow. The lost will be saved.

Enjoy this from the book Pirate Monks:
When we find the gospel to be true and we begin to wrestle with its implications, we are eventually forced to face our stubborn humanity and admit that we are still the walking wounded, broken yet perpetually healing. But there’s a problem. The problem is that contemporary Church culture requires us [too often] to give the appearance of victory. There are subjects that church people cannot talk about. There are activities that church people do not engage in. There are places we do not hang out, fantasies we don't entertain, computers that do not show images that are destructive, relationships that are not failing, abuses that are not stealing joy. In church, there is no darkness or shadow to speak of. In church we are allowed to talk about our past victories over sin but not the battles that are still under way. As a result, we promote a gospel of our own construction. This is not the gospel the New Testament talks about, the foundation strong enough to bear the weight of the world and the depravity of the redeemed. Ours is flimsy, too fragile to carry our failures. This gospel is unbelievable because it is only half a gospel.

“Bring the full weight of who you are into your relationships.” By this we mean that we are to bring every part of our story-- all of it -- into our conscious decision-making process, into the ways we talk, act, and love others. When we “show up” fully in our relationships, we give others the chance to know us, and we give them permission to be known.

Honest fellowship in Christ and trusted relationships releases the secret weapon of the blood of Christ and our testimony.

the “not so secret weapons” - spiritual disciplines
Abide in Christ and let his Words abide (live in continually).
Ask God’s help to examine thoughts-source and direction
Meet regularly for honest fellowship with a small group
Be accountable to grow in the mind of Christ (fruit of spirit)
Believe  for a release from negative agreements and mindsets
Put off the old self...Be made new in the spirit of your minds...put on the new self created after the likeness of God Eph 4:22-24

Our Teacher

OUR TEACHER

By Richard Lineberry

The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. He will teach us to love the Word of God, to meditate on it and keep it. He will reveal the love of Christ to us so that we may love Him fervently and with a pure heart. Then we shall begin to see that a life in the love of Christ, even in the midst of our daily life and distractions is not only a possibility but a reality.
                                … Andrew Murray

The Holy Spirit is a person. He is not enthusiasm or emotions. He is not courage or energy. He is the personification of all that is good. He is a person the same as you are a person but not of material substance. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has a will and intelligence. He has hearing and knowledge. He has the ability to see and think. He can bear burdens, hear, speak, desire, grieve, rejoice. He is the Person that is putting Christ together in me.
                                … A. W. Tozer

No one would try to learn a foreign language or try to learn tight wire walking without a teacher. No one that studies a subject thoroughly refuses the wisdom of one who knows everything about the subject. The Holy Spirit is our expert on the Christian walk. Think of the millions of people He has already guided. He is the authorized one to interpret Scripture. He knows how to pray for our deepest needs. He knows the secrets of every heart. He gives God’s gifts to those who seek them. He reveals mysteries. He produces the fruit of love and God’s nature in us. We are His assignment, that is, to guide us into the fullness of Christ.

My prayer for us today is that we listen to Him and open our hearts and wills to his direction. If we say that we have trouble hearing, that is exactly what He needs to hear from us. He removes obstacles, clears our vision and equips us to see God’s doings in everything.

Margin or Marginless

“Let your life be a stepping stone to Christ and not a stumbling block.” 1 Cor. 8:13

“If what you do does not honor and glorify God, it’s a waste of time.” 1 Cor. 10:31

MARGIN OR MARGINLESS?
By: Rick Warren

“God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer… You’ve always given me breathing room, a place to get away from it all.” Psalm 61:1, 3 (MSG)

A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics:

·  People now sleep 2½ fewer hours each night than people did a hundred years ago.

·The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.

·The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.

·We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people, and five years waiting for people who are late for meetings.

At least in the U.S., we’re a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society that is chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, “I have no peace! I have no quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming” (Job 3:26 GWT).

Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media exposure.

We’re stressed by information overload; we’re stressed by accessibility overload – we’re connected all the time. Simply put, we’re stressed by the pace of life.

Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your life. Margin is breathing room. It’s keeping a little reserve that you’re not using up. It’s not going from one meeting to the next to the next with no space in between.

Margin is the space between your load and your limit. But most of us are far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error in our lives.

Dr. Richard Swenson, MD says this: “The conditions of modern day living devour margin. If you’re homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you’re penniless we offer you food stamps. If you’re breathless we connect you to oxygen. But if you’re marginless we give you one more thing to do. Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were 10 minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That’s marginless.

“Margin, on the other hand, is having breath at the top of the staircase, money at the end of the month, and sanity left over at the end of adolescence. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin is having a friend help carry the burden.

“Marginless is not having time to finish the book you’re reading on stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure.”