“God in His mercy does not keep us alive because of some mission we have to perform, but rather because He desires to reveal Himself to us on earth in ways impossible in heaven.
We are not left here on earth because we have a job to do, but because we have a God to know. And because knowing Him is the purpose of our existence here, we need not frustrate ourselves trying to identify our slot of service or qualifying gifts.
You remain on earth to know God. If your heart is set on knowing Him, all else will fall into place. Every experience in our lives is necessary preparation for the revelation of Him! Do not get caught up in an activity that promises spiritual fulfillment. Do not be deceived. Far more than any job to do, far more than any work to accomplish, we have a
great God to know!” from LETTERS TO THE THIRSTY … For Vision, For
Life, For Rest, by Ed Miller published by our good friends at Waterbrook Press.
Need a great Mother’s Day gift? Why not send you wife and/or Mom to our Spring Ladies Day on Wednesday, May 18th. Our special speaker will be Nancy Mankins. See our website for details or call today to make
reservations. www.americaskeswick.org 800-453-7942.

Today is the National Day of prayer and I want to encourage you to take time today to pray for our President, Vice-President and our nation.
“A Prayer for Guidance”
“O eternal and everlasting God, I presume to present myself this morning before thy Divine majesty, beseeching thee to accept of my humble and hearty thanks, that it hath pleased thy great goodness to keep and preserve me the night past from all the dangers poor mortals are subject to, and has given me sweet and pleasant sleep, whereby I find my body refreshed and comforted for performing the duties of this day, in which I beseech thee to defend me from all perils of body and soul.
Direct my thoughts, words and work, wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit, from the dross of my natural corruption, that I may with more freedom of mind and liberty of will serve thee, the everlasting God, in righteousness and holiness this day, and all the days of my life. Increase my faith in the sweet promises of the gospel; give me repentance from dead works; pardon my wanderings, and direct my thoughts unto thyself; the God of my salvation; teach me how to live in thy fear, labor in thy service, and ever run in the ways of thy commandments; make me always watchful over my heart, that neither the terrors of conscience, the loathing of holy duties, the love of sin, nor an unwillingness to depart this life, may cast me into a spiritual slumber, but daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time attain the resurrection of the just unto eternal life bless my family, friends and kindred.
Unite us all in praising and glorifying thee in all our works begun, continued, and ended, when we shall come to make our last account before thee, blessed Savior . . . ” From the prayer journal, Mount Vernon, un-dated.
May God bless America this day!

“You can confess your sin without ever repenting, but it is impossible to repent without confessing! And confession doesn’t bring about forgiveness! The blood of Christ has done that for us.
True confession agrees with God not only concerning sin, but also with the truth that we ARE forgiven not that we WILL BE forgiven. Then it goes a step further and agrees with God concerning the proper attitudes and actions that need to be taken in order to ‘work out what has been worked in.’ True confession focuses our mind not on our failures, but back to the finished work of Christ on the cross, which leads to a thankful heart. From God’s perspective, confession isn’t meant to be a sporadic, mechanical response. Instead, it’s to be a continual, dependent attitude pulsating through the life of every believer walking in the truth.
When we learn to agree with God concerning forgiveness, our minds begin to see the totality of grace that God has for us in Christ Jesus.
Understanding God’s grace changes the way we live.” from the pen of of author, Bob George in his book, FAITH THAT PLEASES GOD, published by Harvest House.
Good words to ponder on May 4, 2005. God bless.

“Faith is man’s response to what God has already imitated on his behalf.
God is always the initiator. We are the responders. Our faith responds to the totality of what God has accomplished on our behalf through Christ Jesus, but our faith is never the cause of it.
The faith that pleases God recognizes that there’s no area of our life that God hasn’t recognized. He knows our past, He knows our present, and He knows or future. He knows every hidden motive of our heart and every thought. And because He is a God who loves us, He has initiated a unique plan for our happiness. When we RESPOND to God and learn to walk by faith in Him, we live contented, productive lives — even in the midst of seeming adversity.
Faith is believing that God knows best and is faithful even when we are faithless. The Christian life is not to be lived through self-effort in obedience to the law, but by faith as we are led internally by the Spirit of God. The reason people insist on hanging onto the law is that they have never experienced being led by the Spirit. It thus becomes easy to fall into the trap of being an initiator instead of a responder.
But that’s not God’s plan nor His desire for us. He will not keep us wandering in the wilderness if we allow ourselves to be led by Him.
The Christian life is a life of faith from beginning to end. The faith in Christ that first saved us is the same faith by which we grow and live. Our proper response of thankfulness to God’s gift of grace changes as we see how grace provides for us what we could not provide for ourselves.”
–adapted from THE FAITH THAT PLEASES GOD, by Bob George published by Harvest House.
Good words for us to ponder on this May 3, 2005

“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!