Contentment

Few people ever reach contentment. One poet put it this way:

As a rule, man's a fool

When it's hot, he wants it cool

And when it's cool, he wants it hot,

Always wanting what is not

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsale thee.

Contentment is wrapped in trust in the Giver of peace and satisfaction. Every now and then a person will develop a spiritual thirst for something missing in his or her life. These people are condidates for God's offer of salvation. Trusting in Christ gives joy and peace as never known before.

Possessions, pursuits, and pleasures are temporary. Only Jesus can satisfy your soul.

He Touched Me

I love to play Bill Gaither's song He Touched Me on the piano because that touch transformed my life.

Mark 1:40,41 . . . "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched him, and saith unto him, "I will; be thou clean."

Can you hear the crowd gasp as they see Jesus touch the leper. Isolated and alone, how long had it been since anyone touched this man, since he had held his wife or children.

To touch a leper made one unclean and was strictly forbidden by the Law. Touching a leper could transmit the disease. But Jesus touched him, and he was healed.

Jesus is still touching lives today. No matter who you are or what you've done, if you let Him, His touch can heal the plague of sin gripping your life. Ask Him to come into your heart. He will make you a new creature, and you will never be the same.

That's Big

We think of our God in terms of the grand, the great, and the glorious. After all, He stood in the middle of nothing, took nothing, and created everything. That's big.

He sent His inspired Word through human instruments and preserved it to this very day. That's big.

He sent His Son Jesus into this world to die on the cross so that we might be forgiven of sin, adopted into God's family, and go to heaven. That's big.

Our God moves in big ways, but He is able to take the small, insignificant things of this world and use them for His glory.

Give your little self to Jesus and watch Him take your frail clay body and use it for His glory.

2 Corinthians 4:7 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Without Jesus I am just a cracked pot. With Him, I can be a vessel of honor to the glory of God.

Let God Be Magnified

When Kountze Texas cheerleaders (some from my church) lifted up the Word of God on banners, which the football team ran through, it stirred up a hornets nest. Through the media the story touched lives all over the world.

Psalm 70:4 Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.

The magnified Word of God converts, cleanses, and comforts. It's promises always come to pass.

Facing possible death, the apostle Paul magnified Christ in prison. His testimony to the king emboldened the saints and caused a lot of people to pray. It was in prison that he wrote to the church at Philippi.

Philippians 1:20 . . . so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.

Magnifying Christ ought to be the purpose of every born-again Christian. 

I Learned To Trust

Seventeen years ago dismal silence filled the car on the ride home from the doctor's office. The breast cancer diagnosis had kicked us in the gut. Why me? Gale's voice wavered when he finally spoke.

"This shouldn't be happening to someone like you."

During the year of treatment the amazing love of God smothered me with assurance every day. Nausea pills worked --- I didn't get sick. Through it all I learned to trust in Jesus. 

I thank God for the mountains,

And I thank Him for the valleys,

I thank Him for the storms He brought me through

For if I'd never had a problem,

I wouldn't know God could solve them,

I'd never know what faith in God could do.

Andrae Crouch

John 9:2,3 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Usable

Do you want God to do great things through you? Do you want victory in your life?

Left to ourselves, we are incapable of serving God as He deserves to be served. The only way we will ever be usable in God's hands is when we allow His Spirit to control us. It is an every day surrender to His will, to prayer and study of His Word.

Galatians 5:16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

The Spirit of God will make us powerful to be used in ways that we can hardly imagine. We must give God Lordship of our lives. 

Are you concerned about where you are spiritually with The Lord? Do you need to rededicate you life to Him?

What Is Worship?

A man named Temple defines worship this way:

• Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God
• To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God.
• To feed the mind with the truth of God
• To purge the imagination by the beauty of God
• To open the heart to the love of God
• To devote the will to the purpose of God

All this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.

Psalm 23:5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil: my cup runneth over.

God's power, grace, love, mercy, salvation, Word, and a host of other things fills our hearts to overflowing with love and adoration. That is worship.

When the Spirit of God on the inside bubbles up and fills us with the wonder and glory of God, praise in our hearts flows out and is offered up to God. That is worship.

If  every believer went to church to worship God, church problems would be a thing of the past.