God in the details
The post showed up days ago, I read it, liked it, did nothing to save it somewhere. Now I can't find it. If you wrote or read it, please supply me a link and I'll add it here. Below, is the basic point.
A teacher was going over the Bible history of God ordering the elimination of an entire people. Maybe it was the Canaanites. He asked why God would do that, requiring that even the children be killed. A 12-year-old answered, "Because they would grow up to be just like their parents."
Grateful today? I, for a blessed work experience, opportunity to write, comfortable home office wherein to do it all.
What am I excited about today? A teenager returning to study the Bible after more than a month's recess.
Article title on a religious website: "What does it mean to leave and cleave?" My answer: It means you need to get an understandable Bible.
Sometimes things works, sometimes they don't. And often you think they are when they aren't. That's the stickler. But God is sovereign and still is working, Rom 8.28.
In some brotherhood literature, a bio line of a brother said, "He writes extensively." At first, I thought it said "excessively." Was I thinking of self?
An original verse: More blest to give, said Jesus, than receive; / More peaceful, too, than doubt, is to believe.
A Bible verse: "Will you not revive us once more? Then your people will rejoice in you!" Psa 85.6.
A brother posted to two email groups and said,
I want to encourage others, especially our younger preaching brethren, to make more use of home Bible studies.
Right proper encouragement. I wonder what percentage of preachers — young and old — are apt and prepared to teach someone the gospel outside the pulpit.
A brother told me about one preacher who had never converted a soul teaching one-on-one. If that is not unusual, it's no wonder growth has stagnated in the USA.
Here is where real church growth will happen, when preachers and all saints begin teaching in the homes.
Today is a national holiday, one of the big ones. Staying quiet in my corner, study, brunch, writing, translating, reading, pondering.
Keeping to oneself is a good thing. Carry your own burden. Till your own garden. Not meddle in the affairs of others.
From a novel: "After prayer, she hoped, would follow reason, God's gift to her." I like that.
You will change the course of history. Not many, if any, will remember, but the heavens register your influence upon mankind.
Is it true that compassion begins with self?
An original verse: Since the beginning, Satan tells the lie: / "Ignore the command! You surely will not die."
A Bible verse. "May I hear about your loyal love in the morning, for I trust in you. Show me the way I should go, because I long for you" Psa 143.8.
Have you ever read a right excellent phrase and, instead of writing it down, determined to remember it, only to forget it the next day? Yes, well ...
Ah, yes, now it comes to me. The phrase is: "a man of many doors." What do you make of it?
Great writing cannot carry a bad story, unless all you're after is florid or impressive language.
Man's nature desires acceptance, approval, and — yes, we must use the word here — love. So rarely he discovers it.
Books are made to stand vertically on the shelf, except for very large ones, and not packed in too tightly. People, too.
An original verse: How dear to us our comforting myth! / On him who spurns it, our fiercest wrath!
A Bible verse: "When I worried about many things, your assuring words soothed my soul" Psa 94.19 GW.
Where they got this idea, I'll never know, but I do know they did not get it from Scripture.
https://twitter.com/EAUKnews/status/1168841366954237952
"The early church never preached the good news without tending to people’s physical and material needs."
Never? It's not like the apostles traipsed into cities and started soup kitchens and housing projects before they started preaching.
Time to get real, people. The church's one mission is proclaiming the gospel. Once people were converted, they took care of their own. That is what the Bible shows.
The antiquated language in this comment on Lk 6.25 by J. Trapp recommends itself, for some reason.
Ver. 25. Woe unto you that laugh now] Worldlings’ jollity is but as a book fairly bound, which, when it is opened, is full of nothing but tragedies.
Don't know the author of the quote, but I feel what he says.
"Through all of the brokenness and weariness that wears and tears on the human heart, the love of God keeps us from wreckage. The ship may rock heavy against the tide, but Hallelujah, He remains in control and we remain in Him, protected, directed, whole." —M.H. Nichols
Along these lines, read my poem, THE LONGER ON EARTH.
Give a listen to this audio of my sermon about eternal things preached at Somers Avenue congregation in N. Little Rock AR Aug. 18. Length: 32 minutes.
I received a missions newsletter from a good brother working in a hard place. I'm in no position to evaluate his work. Each worker stands or falls before the Lord who is Judge of all. At the same time, I see comments like the following one repeatedly. This one was made after 25 years of work in the same place:
If our support is not continued the work will probably die in the places where we are working because our full-time preacher and his family will not be able to continue to work there.
It is possible that this is true because, in part, of the methodology used in that place. Across the board, American Christians are reproducing the bad habits they practice in the U.S. They go in, build a building, hire a full-time preacher, ship in American preachers for a week at a time to teach, and develop their work in this way.
Friends, there is a better way than using large amounts of American funds directly in a mission effort. We hope to develop works that, after years of our investment, will finally become self-supporting. But here's the catch: As a work begins, so it will continue. This is a principle that has proven to be true time and again.
As a work begins, so it will continue.
So start a work in the manner that you want to see it functioning 10 and 20 years down the road. That means, in part, not creating a dependence upon foreign funds. This has been repeated through the years, but we don't seem to be making much progress on it, because we are reproducing a failed American model.