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Monthly Archives: March 2012


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A Prostitute Teaches Me How To Worship

As Christians, we often spend a lot of time wondering what is wrong with us.

We hear of martyrs on foreign soil  laying down their lives for the gospel in bloody extravagant fashion. Church history testifies of men and women who stood against fierce political and social opposition and proclaimed boldly the foolishness of the cross. In our bible reading the fearless radical passion of the early church in the book of Acts is an indictment on our listless and dry spiritual estate.

Even reading a popular book calling us to “Radical” gospel commitments doesn’t necessarily bring the quick spiritual fix we long for.

It’s enough to make any solid sincere saint at the least question their own fruit, and at the most question their very salvation.

All of this begs the question.

Thankfully, as is always the case with the most important questions, the Bible is forthcoming with a more than adequate answer. It’s found in Luke 7:36-50:

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Let’s stop there for now.

Where does such passion, boldness, and extravagant worship come from?

This is an excellent article written by Bryan over at Chief of the Least. This article is about worship, do we worship unashamedly? Why don’t we if we don’t? What reason did the prostitute have to perform such an open act of love and worship before others? Do we worship openly or while trying to blend in and hide?

Read the rest of this great post here, http://chiefofleast.com/2012/03/31/a-prostitute-teaches-me-how-to-worship/

While you are there check out the rest of Bryan’s site and let him know you were there! Make sure you catch the next article Bryan will be doing as part of this series on worship.

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The Operating Principle of Life

     

Sun.Son,
by Neil Anderson
March 31

THE OPERATING PRINCIPLE OF LIFE
Mark 11:22 
And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God”
The sun is perhaps the most credible object of faith for the world. It appears to be immutable. It has always been there, 24 hours of every day, 365 days a year. Without the sun, people couldn’t live. If the sun didn’t rise tomorrow morning, what would happen to the world’s faith? All of humanity would be thrown into confusion.
If we have such great faith in the sun, why don’t we have even greater faith in the Son who made the sun and all the rest of the fixed order of the universe?
Our faith is in God. Genuine faith is born out of a knowledge of the will of God and exists only to fulfill that will. Faith is not a means of getting man’s will done in heaven; it is the means of getting God’s will done on earth.
After hearing me speak on spiritual conflicts, a young man came by to talk about his personal life. He said he’d had several experiences of not being able to speak the name of Jesus aloud. I asked him about his faith. He thought he had made a decision for Christ years earlier in an evangelistic meeting. He tried living with some American Indians to continue his spiritual journey, but that proved to be disastrous. He finally ended up living in a pastor’s home where he was helped with the assurance of his salvation. The pastor encouraged him to just go live by faith.
The young man said to me, “I’ve been trying to live by faith for three years, and it has been one trial after another.”
“Faith in what?” I asked.
He didn’t know how to respond. This young man was trying to live by faith in faith. But faith itself is not a valid object. The only valid object for faith is God and the revelation we have of Him in His Word. Faith is the operating principle of life. The only difference between Christian and non-Christian faith is the object. God must be the object of our faith.
Prayer: Lord God, I place my faith in You alone today. Help me not to allow anyone or anything to take Your place as the object of my faith.


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Rediscover the Church

TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2012

Rediscover the Church

If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

We are living in a time in which some people are saying that we need to re-envision the church or reinvent the church. But I beg to differ. I think we need to rediscover the church. I don’t think we need a new version of it as much as we need to get back to the original version that Jesus himself established.

That is the church that changed the world. That is the church that turned its world upside down. I don’t know about the church of today. It seems to me the world today is turning the church upside down.

I think the answer is to get as close as we can to the original foundation and template for the church that Jesus himself established. This is God’s original design for the church.

My goal as a senior pastor is not to have a big church; it is to have a strong church—and even more to the point, a biblical church. Having said that, there should be church growth, and I think the best kind of growth is through the addition of new believers.

A trend in a lot of churches today is to be relevant to the culture, so they are trying to do everything they can to connect. I am all for relevance. However, I do not believe in relevance at the expense of reverence. This is still the church. And when I stand up to speak, I am not there to entertain or to give my personal philosophy or political views. I am there to teach the Word of God and to call people to Jesus Christ.

I think sometimes we are trying so hard to be cool that we have forgotten how to be biblical. Let’s keep the integrity of our message intact.

Greg Laurie


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When Strongholds Become Entrenched

     


by Neil Anderson
March 27
WHEN STRONGHOLDS BECOME ENTRENCHED
2 Timothy 2:4 
No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier
Once your consideration of a temptation has triggered an emotional response leading to a Plan B choice, you will act upon that choice and own that behavior. You may resent your actions or claim that you are not responsible for what you do. But you are responsible for your actions at this stage because you failed to take a tempting thought captive when it first appeared at the threshold of your mind.
People who study human behavior tell us that if you continue to repeat an act for six weeks, you will form a habit. And if you exercise that habit long enough, a stronghold will be established. Once a stronghold of thought and response is entrenched in your mind, choosing to act contrary to that pattern is extremely difficult.
Like environmental stimulation, a stronghold of the mind can be the result of a brief encounter or a prevailing atmosphere. For example, a woman goes into a deep depression every time she hears a siren sound. It turns out that she was raped 20 years earlier while a siren was wailing in the distance. In the weeks and months after the rape, the sound of a siren triggered traumatic memories. Instead of resolving that conflict, she relived the tragedy in her mind, deepening the emotional scars and locking herself into a thought pattern she cannot seem to break. That’s a stronghold.
Other strongholds are the result of a prevailing pattern of thinking and responding. Imagine, for instance, a nine-year-old boy whose father is an alcoholic. When the father comes home drunk and belligerent every night, the boy is simply scared stiff of him. He scurries out of sight and hides. As the boy continues in his defensive reaction to his hostile alcoholic father, he forms a pattern of behavior. Ten years later, when he faces any kind of hostile behavior, how do you think he will respond? He will run away. His deeply ingrained pattern of thinking and responding has formed a stronghold in his mind.
Prayer: Father, don’t allow the enemy to deceive me into weak-willed actions that dilute my testimony and effectiveness as a believer.


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At the Threshold of Temptation

     


by Neil Anderson
March 26
AT THE THRESHOLD OF TEMPTATION
Titus 2:11, 12 
The grace of God has appeared . . . instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age
Yielding to temptation is another step toward a stronghold being established in your mind. Whenever you are stimulated to conform to Plan B instead of God’s Plan A for your life, you are experiencing temptation. The essence of all temptation is the invitation to live independently of God and fulfill legitimate needs in the world, the flesh or the devil instead of in Christ. That’s the great contest. And Satan knows just which buttons to push to tempt you away from dependency on Christ.
The moment you are tempted to get your need met in the world instead of in Christ, you are at the threshold of a decision. If you don’t immediately choose to take that thought “captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), you will begin to consider it as an option. And if you begin to mull it over in your mind, immediately your emotions will be affected and the likelihood of yielding to that temptation is increased.
The Scriptures teach us that God has provided a way of escape from every temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). But the escape is right at the threshold of the temptation. If you don’t control the temptation at the threshold, you run the risk of allowing the temptation to control you. Rare is the Christian who can turn around after directing his will toward Plan B.
For example, a man sees a pornographic picture and is tempted toward lust. He has the opportunity to respond by saying something like, “My relationship with sin has ended. I choose to take this thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I’m not going to look at it or think about it.” And he separates himself from the picture immediately and escapes the lust.
But if he hesitates at the threshold, stares at the picture, and begins to fantasize about it, he will trigger an emotional landslide producing a physical response which will be difficult to stop. He must capture the tempting thought in the threshold or it will probably capture him.
Prayer: Dear God, I want to be obedient to Your perfect plan for my life today. I don’t want to give in to Plan B thinking. Strengthen my will to obey.


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How You are Programmed

     


by Neil Anderson
March 25
HOW YOU ARE PROGRAMMED
Colossians 2:8 
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men . . . rather than according to Christ
The first step toward the formation of strongholds in our minds can be called “environmental stimulation.” You were designed to live in fellowship with God and fulfill His purposes, but you were born physically alive and spiritually dead in a hostile world (Ephesians 2:1, 2). Before you came to Christ, all your stimulation came from this environment. Every day you lived in this environment you were influenced by it and preconditioned to conform to it.
The worldly stimulation you were exposed to was both brief and prevailing. Brief stimulation includes individual events, situations, places and personal encounters you experienced. You were influenced by books you read, movies you watched, music you listened to, and traumatic events you experienced or witnessed, such as a car accident or a death in the family. You learned a way (which may or may not have been God’s way) to cope with these experiences and resolve the conflicts they produced.
Prevailing stimulation consists of long-term exposure to your environment, such as the influence of your family, your friends and peers, your neighborhood, your teachers, and your job. If you grew up separated from God, and were raised in a non-Christian environment, you developed a philosophy of how to survive, cope and succeed in this world apart from God.
When you became a Christian your sins were washed away, but your predisposition to think and behave a certain way, which you developed as you adjusted to your environment, remained programmed in your mind. In fact, you can become a born-again believer and continue to live on the basis of the lifestyle you developed while living independently of God. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).
Prayer: I know I was saved in a moment, Lord. But my character still needs daily transformation. Help me be as patient with others in their transformation as You are with me.


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Strongholds of the Mind

     


by Neil Anderson
March 24
STRONGHOLDS OF THE MIND
2 Corinthians 10:5 
We are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ
The nature of the battle for your mind is clearly presented in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
The first thing you need to know about the battle for your mind is that it is not fought on the plane of human ingenuity or ability. You can’t outsmart or outmuscle the flesh or the devil on your own. Your weapons must be “divinely powerful” if you are going to win a spiritual conflict.
The main targets which must be destroyed are the “fortresses” in the mind. The King James Version uses the word strongholds . Strongholds are negative patterns of thought which are burned into our minds either through repetition over time or through one-time traumatic experiences.
Thoughts determine behavior, and thought patterns determine temperaments. Strongholds are revealed in un-Christlike temperaments and behavior patterns. A mind-set impregnated with hopelessness causes us to accept as unchangeable something known to be contrary to God.
How are these destructive strongholds established in our minds? Usually they are the result of a number of subtle steps which lead us away from God’s plan for us and mire us in Plan B behavior. We will look at these steps and how we should respond to them over the next several days.
Prayer: Lord, I determine to prepare my mind for action today and avoid passivity in my thinking, because Satan loves passivity.


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A Call To Action – Fasting and Prayer

We are going to begin setting up a day (or days) to call our fellow bloggers to join us in fasting and prayer for a revival in the United States.  If you are not from the U.S. you are still welcome to join us to fast and pray for the church as a whole.

If you have not already done so, and would like to, you can join OneCry.com -a site for people wanting to join together in prayer for the country and the church.  Greg Holt from Believing God Today has set up a group at OneCry called Believers United for Revival which can be found here if you care to join.

OneCry.com has set up a united time of prayer every Tuesday from 8:00-8:30 PM Eastern Time.  There is a phone number on their site if you wish to participate in this prayer time.  Info can be found here.  Long distance rates are applied.

Please see one of the two links below for the rest of this post. There is more info on fasting and a date that has been set up as our first day of fasting. We also have a group on Facebook which you can find here. Thank you for your prayerful consideration of this.

Greg

http://drusillamott.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/a-call-to-action-fasting-and-prayer/

http://ptl2010.com/2012/03/24/a-call-to-action-fasting-and-prayer/

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For Those Who Do Not Feel Worthy to Approach God in Prayer

SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012


Do you ever feel as though you are not “worthy” enough to approach God in prayer?

If so, then read this Scripture:

His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us. And he did this because he wanted to! Now all praise to God for his wonderful kindness to us and his favor that he has poured out upon us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. (Ephesians 1:5-6 TLB)

What God has done for us

So often, we hear about what we are supposed to do for God. But the emphasis of the Bible is not so much on what we are supposed to do for God, but rather on what God has done for us.

If we can get hold of that in our minds and hearts, it will change our outlook and actions. The more we understand of what God has done for us, the more we will want to do for Him.

This is no small truth. In fact, it’s fundamental to our spiritual lives.

The devil would love to keep you from praying at all by reminding us how “unworthy” we are—telling us, in effect, that we have a lot of nerve to even think that we could approach a holy God. He whispers, “Do you think that God would hear your prayers after what you have done?” But the real question to ask is this: “Is Jesus Christ worthy to come into the presence of the Father whenever He wants?” Of course, He is.

“Accepted in the Beloved”

The fact is that we are “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Because Christ has open access to the presence of the Father at any time, we have the same access when we come to God the Father through our relationship with Jesus. It’s not on the basis of what we have done for God. It is solely on the basis of what Christ has done for us.

Listen to the writer to the Hebrews:

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. (Hebrews 10:19-21 NLT)

I just can’t imagine any better news than that.

Greg Laurie


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OneCry…Prayer for Revival

  • To my valued readers,

  • Would you please take a moment and read this letter I wrote inviting people to join us in prayer for our country? Do you maybe not live in the U.S? Maybe you have friends who do and would like to join us anyway.

    Would you please consider joining us?
    We are a group of people who are part of a larger group of groups on OneCry.com.

    What is OneCry? We are actively calling out to God in prayer for a revival to happen in our country. This nation has slid so far downhill, God has been taken out of schools, courts and practically everything else! We want God back into our lives, our schools…our everything!

    We are as a nation poised on the brink of a fall, a very bad fall. Either we are going to turn to God because of disasters, or the economy collapsing, political reasons, war, or maybe a combination of many things; or we are going to turn back to God as a nation through prayer and fasting for a revival to happen. Look at the world around you, more specifically our country…it doesn’t look good does it? You need not look any further then the news to see what we have turned into in this country; an immoral, God hating or at least uncaring of what God says, anything goes, I can do whatever I want nation. It’s positively sickening! This is an opportunity to help change that. God does listen to prayer, the more of us praying, the better.

    I need to say here however, that if you can’t seriously commit to praying daily for revival, then maybe this isn’t for you. I’m not doing this to make a big group on facebook or on OneCry or to promote me…forget about me. This is serious and I would like people to treat it as such. Please don’t join just to join. Join us to be a part of this growing movement to bring this country back into the fear of God. He is what matters, not me and not anyone else either.

    Pray about this and give it some thought before you say no. I know all of you are busy, but I deem this to be of utmost importance. This could make a huge change in this country!

    You can find us on OneCry here, http://www.onecry.com/group/eversUnitedforRevival/
    You will see a welcoming message from me; sign the declaration, join the group, and download the PDF’s and go over them as you can. The PDF’s I’m referring to are, Draw a Circle
    Praying for Spiritual Awakening.
    You can also find us on Facebook here, https://www.facebook.com/groups/230652333699363/

    Thank you
    Greg

  • www.onecry.com

    With heavy hearts, we recognize that the church in America is in a state of spiritual emergency. Like the churches warned in Revelation, we have become lukewarm and compromised, and the light of our witness has grown dim. We confess that despite access to more resources and biblical teaching than an…

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