The secret of following God's will is wrapped in rejecting the good for God's best.
When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages". To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here". Believers who have the Gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.
Since when has obedience to Christ and His Gospel become optional to Christianity?
In order to plant the Gospel, we must take risk.
If something fit in with what God had said to me, then I considered it. If not - no matter how attractive it appeared - I refused. The secret of following God's will, I discovered, usually is wrapped up in rejecting the good for God's best.
God's word tells us that righteousness is a gift; it cannot be earned. But godliness is not a gift. We must pay a price to touch godliness through a daily decision to die to self and embrace the cross. God calls us to learn godliness in the classroom of life among people as we sit on airplanes and buses, walk among our neighbors and labor at our factories or desks.
How many more cars, clothes, toys and trinkets do we really need before we wake up and realize that half the world goes to bed every night with empty stomachs and naked bodies?
Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.
Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?
The most important factor in abandoning our thoughts is to look in the Bible and see what God says about a matter. Then we must determine to act on His Word rather than on our own thoughts or those the devil may whisper into our minds.
The spirit of submission is choosing His way over ours for His sake.
If you want to meet the needs of the poor in this world, there is no better place to start than by preaching the Gospel.
Yet so often it seems that victory eludes us. It is when our self-confidence is finally destroyed and is replaced with dependence upon God that we have victory.
We pretend with a spiritual life we don't live, a peace we don't experience and a holiness and commitment we don't possess. . . . We will never make any progress in becoming more like Jesus unless we permit God to cut us open, search our hearts, try us, know our thoughts and then change us from the inside. Only then can we become real according to the Word of God.
We must pay a price to touch godliness through daily decision to die to self and embrace the cross.
Every Christian in America has some minimal responsibility to get involved in helping the poor brethren in the church in other countries.
I believe, as followers of Christ, we are commanded to reach out to the least of these in the name of Jesus and show them they matter a great deal to God, who sacrificed His only Son to reach them with His love.
Time is short. The world is at the brink of eternity. Right now we have the greatest opportunity to rise up and take the victory of the cross to the last corners of this earth. The Lord Jesus is graciously calling a remnant to the joys of simple obedience. For those who respond, I believe there is an opportunity right now to share in the last great move of God before Christ returns.
Faith deals exclusively with believing God and His Word.
Maybe it doesn't seem like anyone ever watches or appreciates you. Maybe no one on earth understands you. But your King is always watching you. Do it all for Him.