Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Are You Limiting God?


BIBLE MEDITATION:
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” 1 Corinthians 1:27

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
People say, “Well, I don't believe God can use me.” You’re insulting God. You’re limiting Him. “Well,” you say, “all right then, I'll just serve God in my poor little old weak way.” Quit it! He doesn't want you to serve him in your “poor little old weak way.” God wants to take ordinary people and do extraordinary things through them! This is the kind of people God wants to use. 

It's not your fame; it's your faith. It's not your scholarship; it's your relationship. It's not your ability; it is your availability. It's not who you know; it's Whose you are that counts. 

ACTION POINT:
God takes what the world calls a foolish message, then God takes a weak messenger, and then God compounds these two in the crucible of His love and wisdom. The result is glory to God. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Word of God—the God Who Cannot Lie


BIBLE MEDITATION:
“Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD,.” 2 Kings 7:1a

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
We speak of the Bible as inerrant and infallible. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. I’ve noticed the more liberal a preacher gets, he doesn’t like to call the Bible the Word of God. But oh, dear friend, this is the Word of the Lord, spoken by His prophets, and it is authoritative. 

Billy Graham came to this conclusion in the early years of his ministry and prayed, “I have seen enough of the transforming power of this Word to know that You are behind it…. I take it by faith…and trust You to make clear to me what it means.” 

F. B. Myer, one of the greatest devotional writers of all time, said if any promise of God should fail, “the heavens will clothe themselves in sackcloth, and the sun and moon and stars will reel from their seats. The universe will rock, and a hollow wind will moan through creation, bearing the tidings that God is mutable, that God can lie.” 

ACTION POINT:
There’s no need to argue about it; no quibble about it. If it’s the Word of God and God is a God of truth, then it can’t have error in it. A God of error cannot inspire, a God of truth cannot inspire error. It is the product of the Spirit of God; it is thereby totally infallible because God is infallible. Thank God for the inerrancy of the Bible.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Monday, June 22, 2015

Practical Atheists


BIBLE MEDITATION:
“Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” 2 Kings 7:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
This man, this government official, acted like he believed in God, but he was a practical atheist. To me the biggest fool is not the man who says there is no God, but the man who says there is a God and then doesn't live like it. Here was a man who had a sterile religion. He believed in God in a way. He had a form of godliness, but he denied the power thereof. And he was the loser. He was robbed by the thief of unbelief. I want you to see what the man of God said to him. “Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not eat thereof.” 

ACTION POINT:
Unbelief always withholds God's blessings from us. Your sins are withholding good things from you and unbelief is the chief among them. Confess any unbelief.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Instrument of Evil


God created man in His own image! 
Satan perverted man. 
Evil enters man! 
Sin enters the world bringing corruption! 
We can't fix it! 
The government can't fix it!
Only God through Christ will fix it!
There is no other way!

In recent days a man, full of sin, entered a church and killed 9 people.
This man had hatred in his heart that would not be denied.
He bowed to Satan and was his instrument of evil.
Who eternally judges? 
God alone!
God has given man the power of judgement to keep order in society.
We have laws to keep peace.
They are ordained by God!
The law is a deterrent to lawless people.
But God has made a way for man to receive forgiveness.
He sent His only Son to shed His blood for the remission of our sin.
If you repent and believe God did raise Christ from the dead, giving Him alone the power of salvation for man, you will be saved. 
Repent to live eternally!
Rebellion leads to death eternally!


For peace:
20 "Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you survivors of the nations! They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. 
21 Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. 
22 "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. 
23 By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.'  - Isaiah 45:20-23

5 I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, 
6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other. 
7 I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.  - Isaiah 45:5-7


For healing:
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. - Revelation 22:1-5

For salvation:
 17 But Israel is saved by the LORD with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity. 
18 For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): "I am the LORD, and there is no other.  - Isaiah 45:17-18


For Jesus is God's only acceptable sacrifice for man's sin:
3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-every one-to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 
10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. 
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.  - Isaiah 53:3-12

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Listen To Me


3 "Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; 
4 even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. 
5 "To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?  - Isaiah 46:3-5

9 remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, 
10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,'  - Isaiah 46:9-10

Why are we, we meaning the human race, so unrepentant towards God? 
What is it in us that makes us so foolish?
We have no understanding of God, His power, and the depth of who He is! 
We are made in His image but our spirit has been perverted by sin.
Why will you not bow to Him who is worthy? 

And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. - Revelation 20:15

Those Slaps Do Sting

Slaps, whether physical or mental do sting! 
The physical one stings your body but the mental one stings your heart!

I have a terrible temper. It is something I struggle with daily. God will not forgive a heart full of spite. I must keep my anger away for the glory of the Lord. He alone will repay every hostile deed. 

38 "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'
39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. - Matthew 5:38-39


22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. - 1 Peter 2:22-24


He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.  - Isaiah 53:7


But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you have I committed my cause.  - Jeremiah 11:20

The sting of death kills the body eternally but the sting of unrepentant sin kills the soul eternally.

A Blessing for Fathers on Father’s Day

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in His ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord. The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, and thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Jerusalem.” Psalm 128

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
I am convinced that America’s families will not be changed until the dads in America are changed. The key is the father. God has given us a survival manual, and it begins with the father. He is to be a God-fearing, hard-working, worshipping man of God. He is to be bold, but he must also truly fear God. 

What is the fear of God? Not a cringing dread of God, but love on its knees. And I am convinced that the man who fears God the most loves God the best.

Dads, your children need to see the fear of God in your life. I’ve made an observation of fathers. Do you know what makes a good dad? He is a man who is both strong and tender at the same time. Strong, but not afraid to hug, to kiss, to love, to speak softly and gently to the children. 



ACTION POINT:
These children of yours are like olive plants round about your table. Dads, if you will do this, if you will put the emphasis upon your family, we are going to see good in this nation again.


LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers