“There are few things quite so boring as being religious, but there is nothing quite so exciting as being a Christian. Most folks have never discovered the difference between the one and the other, so that there are those who sincerely try to live a life they do not have, substituting religion for God, Christianity for Christ, and their noble endeavors for the energy, joy, and power of the Holy Spirit. In the absence of reality, they can only grasp at ritual, stubbornly defending the latter in the absence of the former, let they be found with neither!
They are lamps without oil, cars without gas, and pens without ink, baffled at their own importance in the absence of all that alone can make man functional; for man was so engineered by God that the presence of the Creator within the creature is indispensable to His humanity.
Christ gave Himself for us to give Himself to us! His presence puts God back into the man! He came that we might have life — God’s life!
There are those who have a life they never life. They have come to Christ and thanked Him only for what He did, but do not live in the power of who He is. Between Jesus who ‘was’ and the Jesus who ‘will be’
they live in a spiritual vacuum, trying with no little zeal to live for Christ as life that only He can live in and through them, perpetually begging for what in Him they already have.” foreword written by Major Ian Thomas, (author of the classic, THE SAVING LIFE OF CHRIST) in Bob George’s book CLASSIC CHRISTIANITY, published by Harvest House.
Good words for you to ponder on May 2, 2005. Have a blessed day IN CHRIST.

“It’s more giving than receiving . . .” so writes Anne Ortlund in her book, UP WITH WORSHIP.
“Back in the Old Testament days, it was clear to see that worship meant giving. You came to the tabernacle with your offering in your hand or in your arms, perhaps lugging or dragging it. It might have been wheat or oil, but often is was sheep or goat or a young bull.
Worship and giving blurred and blended. In fact, God told the Jewish people, ‘ No one is to appear before me empty-handed.’ (Exodus 34:20)
David wrote, ‘At his tabernacle will I sacrifice,’ and it was to be truly a sacrifice. No sick sheep or lame cows; his gift had to be in perfect condition — something he’d like to have kept for himself. When David was once offered a ‘freebie’ to use as a sacrifice, he wouldn’t take it (2 Samuel 24:24). The point of the sacrifice was to give up by faith in order to see God supply — and so give him pleasure.
This is what worship still means today. Hebrews 13:15 says, ‘Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise
— the fruit of our lips that confess his name.’ The praise is to be continuous, which sometimes means inconvenient. It will take effort to be with your local family of God Sunday by Sunday, lifting up ‘together’
commitment.
Sometimes you can be critically busy — when every minute of the day is precious — to get something done. Well, drag that lamb of two hours’
time, and come to God’s house.
Sometimes you may be drained of emotion. Just the same, drag that lamb of verbalized praise to church, and offer it there.
Sometimes you’ll be low on finances. Get together your sacrificial gift, and drag that Lamb to the Lord’s house. You say you don’t GET anything out of church? Well HE’S supposed to, more than you! Bring to him your consistent, sacrificial gift of worship! Drag that lamb!”
Good words to ponder on this first Sunday of May . . .
Coming soon . . . VICTORY CALL . . . a five day note of encouragement for women (Monday-Friday). Watch for details! Freedom Fighters is a daily ministry of America’s KESWICK . . . where God speaks to hearts and transforms lives!”

“The people all come together in rows in the church, and they face forward. So what? Well, it’s the same physical setup as a stage play, and everybody knows about those. You plunk down in a seat. At H-hour the lights go up, the actors start performing, a prompter offstage whispers cues — and the spectators lean back and evaluate how they do.
But church? NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

Church is unique. Whether the people in the congregation ever discover it or not, they are the actors. The up-front people are the prompters, whispering cues as needed — and God is the audience, looking to see how they do.

Many poor churches don’t even know who’s supposed to be doing it! What lousy, lousy plays they put on! The actors sit around lethargically while the prompters practically exhaust themselves trying to do all their lines for them so the play will still give a lively appearance.
It doesn’t. Nobody is fooled. Pastor, minister of music, worship leader, what are you so self-conscious for? Do you think you are in the spotlight? You’re not! Quit posturing! Pew sitter? Are you sitting there expecting to get rather than give?Just get down on your knees and ask God to stimulate you and start performing.”

from UP WITH WORSHIP by
Anne Ortlund Broadman & Holman
Good words to ponder as you prepare for the Lord’s Day.

“The faithfulness of God is like a gigantic archway spanning human history from its beginning to its ending,” . . . so writes Bible teacher, Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter. “And that resplendent archway is supported on seven glorious, immovable pillars.
Pillar #1 — Divine Righteousness. The faithfulness of God rests on God’s absolute fidelity to every obligation He assumes.
Pillar #2 — Divine Omnipotence. Because God is omnipotent, He is able to accomplish all that He sets out to do.
Pillar #3 — Divine Truth. God is truth, the shadowless totality of truth, whose every word is truth, who therefore could never be false or faithless.
Pillar #4 — Divine Immutability. His eternal unchangingness assures us that He never deviates from His perfect goodness, and never withdraws any promise He ever makes.
Pillar #5 — Divine Holiness. Because God is ethically perfect, all that He ever thinks or says or plans or purposes or promises at any given instant is always faultless. He never has to correct or revise or improve it, which means He can always be fully faithful to it.
Pillar #6 — Divine Wisdom. The omniscient wisdom of God guarantees that He not only fulfills His pledged word, but that He always does so in the wisest conceivable way.
Pillar #7 — Divine Love. As soon as I know that ‘God s love’ and that He loves ME, I know that all His thoughts toward me emanate from pure love and for my everlasting well-being.”

Great words to ponder on this Friday, April 29, 2005

WATCH FOR OUR NEW FIVE DAY DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT FOR WOMEN — “VICTORY CALL” written by our Women’s Ministry Team. Details will be available shortly — another new ministry of America’s KESWICK, where God speaks to hearts and transforms lives!

“Blaise Pascal had a born again experience the night of November 23,1654. A brilliant scientist and intellectual, Pascal met God, as if itwere, face to face, and wrote what he saw and felt, as it was happeningto him. He recorded on a piece of parchment, ‘From about half past tenin the evening until half past midnight.’

A scientist would want to remember the exact time. The piece ofparchment was sewn in his coat and found after his death. It seems hecarried it with him continually. The first word he used to describe theexperience was simply ‘fire.’ That alone set the personal God he metapart from the impersonal god of mere intellect and ideas. The nextsentence is more telling: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,not of philosophers and scholars.’ His experience is a model of what itmeans to pray to the personal God of the Bible. His prayer is notScripture, but it is scriptural in its fervor.

Certainty, certainty,
heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
‘Thy God shall be my God.’
The world forgotten,
and everything except God.
He can only be found by way
staught in the Gospels.
Greatness of the human soul.
‘O righteous Father,
the world has not know Thee,
but I have known Thee.
‘Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have cut myself off from him.
They have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters.
My God, wilt thou forsake me?
Let me not be cut off from him forever!
‘And this is life eternal,
that they may know thee,
the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ,
I have cut myself off from him,
shunned him, denied him, crucified Him.
Let me never be cut off from him!
He can only be kept
by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Sweet and total renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ.
Everlasting joy
in return for one day’s effort on earth.
I will not forget thy word. Amen.

from DEEPENING YOUR CONVERSATION WITH GOD by Dr. Ben Patterson, BethanyHouse Publishers

“We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man into the plan of the organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him that of anything else. Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men . . . What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Spirit can use — men of prayer, mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.”
— E. M. Bounds

Good words for us to ponder on this 27th day of April, 2005. Have a blessed day!

so wrote pioneer missionary to West Africa, Mary Slessor, in the early 19th century. Single and an activist, her days were long and lonely, but she had a remarkable work among the orphans. It is said that she did the work of ten “normal” people during her years of ministry. Her secret? PRAYER!

“My life is one long, daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for enmity to the gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything else that goes to make up life and my poor service . . . I can testify with a full and often wonder-stricken awe that I . . . know God answers prayer . . . Prayer is the greatest power that God has put into our hands for service. Praying is harder work than doing . . . but the dynamic lies that way to advance the kingdom. I have no idea how and why God has carried me over so many hard places, and made these hordes submit to me . . . except in answer to prayer at for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way that I
can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on — power lies that way! ” from

DEEPENING YOUR CONVERSATION WITH GOD, by Dr. Ben Patterson — Bethany Publishers

How’s your prayer life this morning? We need to stop talking about it, and as the NIKE commercial says — JUST DO IT! Have a great day.

Freedom Fighter is late today because my laptop crashed! It was a bummer. I was away this weekend working with my grown children at a camp in West Virginia and we had a great time. What was amazing is that we were all able to work in the same kitchen without killing each other. We are a bunch of strong-willed individuals and when you put all the same opinionated, bossy types in one room … look out!

But the fun thing was that we all had our individual jobs to do, and did them. It reminded me that this is an important aspect of the body of Christ, and a neat illustration of fellowship. The church is comprised of men and women from all walks of life, each uniquely created in His image, and gifted in different ways. But when the body is functioning properly, there is something special that takes place and the church grows and matures.

Warren Wiersbe, one of my favorite 20th century commentators, says that “fellowship is two men in the same ship rowing in the same direction!” Imagine trying to reach your destination if you were both sitting in a row boat facing each other and going in attempting to go forward in a different direction. You wouldn’t get where you wanted to go with much ease.

Fellowship is a cool thing in the body of Christ. Praying together helps to foster fellowship in the body. And that will also help in your relationships with your kids and spouse. Are there relationships where you are stuck and rowing in a different direction? Purpose in your heart today to pray for that special partner/relationship that God has placed you in, and get moving
in the right direction. Good words to ponder today.

“I believe that we find the Bible difficult because we try to read it as we would read any other book, and it is not that same as any other book,” so writes A. W. Tozer. Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even respectfully on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in a heartbroken desperation to get people to accept a Savior of whom they feel no need, and in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficient souls to respond to His generous offer of God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarrassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the show.

Shakespeare may be enjoyed without penitence; we may understand Plato without believing a word he says; but penitence and humility along with faith and obedience are necessary to a right understanding of the Scriptures.

In natural matters faith follows evidence and is impossible without it, but in the realm of the spirit faith precedes understanding; it does not follow it. The natural man must know in order to believe; the believer must believe in order to know. The faith that saves is not a conclusion drawn from evidence; it is a moral thing, a thing of the spirit, a supernatural infusion of confidence in Jesus Christ, a very gift of God.

The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.” A.W. Tozer: Man: The Dwelling Place of GodHave a blessed Lord’s Day.

“Time is short, and eternity is long. The end of all things is at hand. Man has proved himself morally unfit to manage the world in which he has been placed by the kindness of the Almighty,” so writes A.W. Tozer. “He has jockeyed himself to the edge of the crater and cannot go back, and in terrible fear he is holding his breath against the awful moment when he will be plunged into the inferno . . .

In the meantime, a company of people exist on the earth who claim to have the answer to all life’s major questions. They claim to have found the way back to God, release from their sins, life everlasting and a sure guarantee of heaven in the world to come. These are Christians!”

As Christians we are in process to our final destination. How to we press on and grow in the Christian life? A.W. Tozer suggests five things:

1. Strive to get beyond mere pensive longing. Set your face like flint and begin to put your life in order. Every man is as holy as he really wants to be. But the want must be all-compelling.

2. Put away every un-Christian habit from you. If other Christians practice it without compunction, God may be calling you to come nearer to Him than these other Christians care to come. Remember the words, ‘Others may, you cannot.’ Do not condemn or criticize, but seek a better way. God will honor you.

3. Get Christ Himself in the focus of your heart and keep him there continually. Cultivate His knowledge above everything else on earth.

4. Throw your heart open to the Holy Spirit and invite Him to fill you. Make your heart a vacuum and the Spirit will rush in to fill it. Nowhere in the Scriptures nor in Christian biography was anyone ever filled with the Spirit who did not know that he had been, and nowhere was anyone filled who did not know when. And no one was ever filled gradually.

5. Be hard on yourself and easy on others. Carry your own cross but never lay one on the back of another. Begin to practice the presence of God. Cultivate the fellowship of the Triune God by prayer, humility, and obedience.

Let any Christian do these things and he will make rapid spiritual progress.” Good words from A. W. Tozer as written in MAN: THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD.