Who Makes You Differ from Another?

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?--1 Corinthians 4:7

To My Precious Daughters:

Beloved, ask God to implant these words deeply in your heart!  Pride is such deception!  It is of all sins the most ridiculous and foolish. The Bible makes it pretty clear that man is but a breath...a flower that fades and grass that withers. How arrogant we are as human beings to think we are anything!!  We are the work of His hands.  We are the thing formed...not the One who did the forming!  Spurgeon calls us "animated dust."  All we possess comes from the hand of our God...all our gifts are from Him...we cannot glory in them as our own without wronging God.  We owe all to the exceeding riches of His kindness to us in Christ.  As Matthew Henry says "boasting is forever excluded."  

In reality, if we had a proper view, all of who we are would be a reason for humility, NOT pride. A poor man or a beggar glories in those who help and support him.  He does not glory in himself because that would be glorying in his very helpless estate.  In and of ourselves each of us is a beggar...helpless and destined for destruction.  It is only in Christ that we are even made alive!  Without Him we are dead men walking.  He is our all in all.  The more we have received from His hand the more we are in His debt!  Put off pride and put on humility.  By pride and selfish ambition comes nothing but strife, but by humility comes riches, honor and life. God, the high and lofty One...the One who inhabits eternity... dwells with the humble but the proud He knows from afar.  It is Him who formed us, it is Him who works in us...it is Him who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began!  

Beloved, do not envy the gifts and the calling your brother or your sister may have received from  God...do not compare one with another. John 3:27 tells us that a man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.  Each one of us are used by God for His purposes and have been made and molded with exactly those purposes in mind.  Enjoy the rest that brings. Revel in how fearfully and wonderfully you are made. Walk in the works He has prepared beforehand for you.  Rejoice in how all that comes into your life is not only for your good but His glory.  Surrender all and trust Him to do His work in your heart.  There is NOTHING that we have that we can boast or glory in except our God.  He must increase, and we must decrease!  

Your Conscience...Your Friend

Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith,  from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk,  desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.--1 Timothy 1:6-7

To My Beloved Daughters,

Our conscience is a gift from God.  Our guilt is a good indicator to us that we have somehow offended it or distressed it in some way.  I have read that the Puritans called the conscience "the spy within our bosom."  I really like that.  The conscience, if you think about it, really does stand kind of separate from us and speaks to our hearts from a position of authority.  Ignoring it is NOT a good idea.  Your conscience is your friend...it is your ally in your battle against sin. Our conscience and God's truth work together to set us free from the prisons of sin and guilt.  As we surrender to its promptings and allow His word to do its work and root, James says it acts like a mirror. It reflects our heart to us and transforms us as we surrender to what the Spirit of God shows us.

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.--2nd Corinthians 3:18 

Hebrews tells us that the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.  

God, by the blood of Christ has cleansed our conscience to serve Him.  We can and should walk blamelessly before Him.  As you read and study His word ask  God to make your conscience tender...to show you those things that He wants you to see.  Ask Him to search your heart and show you any fear, any anxiety or any sin and lead you in the way everlasting.  Confess your sin immediately and ask His forgiveness...don't put it off.  Guilt festers...your conscience will not clear itself but will become loaded down, defiled, and burdened.  Unexamined actions and unresolved conflicts and issues will spill over into other areas of your life and not in a good way.   After a while you will not even know why you do the things you do or the what or why of what you are feeling.  Your load will become heavier and heavier..your mind will darken and anxiety and depression will set in.  Listen to your conscience as soon as it speaks and do not go against it.  Do not allow it to become defiled, seared or hardened by ignoring it...bring those things it shows you before God immediately in prayer.  When we confess our sin 1 John says, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  He died for us when we were yet His enemies.  How much more can we count on Him as His child.  He has given us all things necessary for life and godliness and blessed us with ALL spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.  He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all how shall He not also freely give us all things?  Jesus Christ, the Righteous, is our Advocate. He is not unconcerned or forgetful but lives to make intercession for us.  

Beloved, nothing can separate us from His love...turn your heart upside down before Him and allow Him to cleanse your conscience and heal your soul.  

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It isChrist who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christ in Our Relationships...

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.--Hebrews 10:24

To My Beloved Daughters

When we live our lives for Christ this happens naturally...no striving needed.  Our submission to His Spirit grows His glory in our relationships with others.  All our earthly relationships have His magnificent and glorious purpose.  We are all fallen sinners in need of His grace.  His goal is to conform us into the image of His Son and He promises that He will be faithful to complete the good work that He starts in us.  See the people God has placed in your life on the basis of the person and work of Jesus Christ.  The way we behave in our relationships with others says much about what we believe about God.  Our words and actions will follow what our heart believes.  Warren Wiersbe puts this in very practical terms.  If a person is a Christian, we can accept Him because Christ lives in Him.  If a person is a non-believer, we can accept Him because Christ died for Him.  Beloved, let Christ be the link between you and your relationships with others.  He gives each of us as believers the privilege to share in His redemptive work.  Love those God has placed in your lives with His love, pray for them fervently, and speak the truth to them in love so that they may grow up in all things into Him who is the head--Christ.   Allow even the circumstances that God permits in your life that crush you and wear you down to shine His light...look to Him in all of it and be radiant.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering;  bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.  And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.--Colossians 3:12-17

WHAT IF...BY BILL

What if Hell were real?

For one thing, all we would know about it authoritatively would be from the Bible.

In turn, that would lend credence to the premise that Heaven was real, as well, since the same Bible is also the authoritative source of information for that, too.

Further, if both Hell and Heaven were real places, as counterintuitive and preposterous as that would seem from a naturalistic worldly viewpoint, then all of the Bible is best taken seriously, since Heaven and Hell are the central themes of redemption, and redemption is the overarching theme of all of Scripture. Simply put, it details how to avoid the one, and attain the other.

So far, so good, yeah?

Here comes the disturbing part - as unimaginably good as Heaven is revealed to be, Hell is equivalently unimaginably bad. It is, in fact, the epitome of bad. There can be no conceivably worse fate than being imprisoned forever in Hell.

But what does that mean?

From what we are told, human beings are immortal. Conscious, and eventually tactile, existence endures after death without end. There is sensation. There is awareness with no cessation. There is no need or ability to sleep or become unconscious. For in Heaven there would be no desire for such, and in Hell, the un-requitable longing for those very things would be unendingly beyond reach or hope of attainment.

In either Heaven or Hell, you are inescapably alive and acutely sensate. In Heaven, these are blessings beyond measure. In Hell, unendurable torments - but endure them you must, for there is no escape, no hope of respite, no hope of relief. 

This is almost impossible to picture. All we experience here on earth, no matter how prolonged, comes with the prospect of an end. Sometimes the end is brought about by the simple passage of time, or by exhaustion leading to fitful sleep, or some other form of unconsciousness. Eventually, even the thought of death brings some hope.

But in Hell, the only prospect is more of the same unending torment.

Hard to really imagine, I know. But if Hell is real, then what I've attempted to describe is real, no matter how unthinkable.

Now here is the truly nightmarish stuff, so be forewarned.

Imagine, if you will, being trapped in an enclosed space, just large enough to accommodate your body laying flat on your back. There is nothing but solid blackness around you and hard, impenetrable surfaces surrounding you. 

You are isolated to the point of feeling as if you are the only being in existence. You can't move, not even to turn over, or bend your knees. You are physically capable of movement, but there is no space to make it possible.

There is absolutely nothing to distract you from your inescapable circumstances. You are alive, excruciatingly awake and aware, and entrapped forever. 

You can think and emote and have perfect recall of all of the opportunities you rejected that were presented to you to avoid this fate by simply accepting the gift that Jesus offers. You have no choice but to experience all of the "if only" regrets and unbearable remorse in raw, soul destroying intensity. Forever.

Would that be mental, emotional and physical torment sufficient enough to be described as immersed in an everlasting "lake of fire"? Or as being endlessly consumed by a "worm that never dies"? Or abiding forever in "outer darkness"?

If Hell were real, it would be like this… or worse.

Now, you can choose to discount or ignore these pictures, and live your scant few years on this planet striving to deny what will be ultimately undeniable.

Or you can accept the gift of redemption offered through the death of God's Son on the Cross, believing that He took upon Himself the payment for your sin.

What if Hell were real?

The only sane response would be abject terror and an unstoppable desire to go to the only Person who could save you, and to cling to Him with all that you are.

Jesus is available today. Today is the day of salvation.

Tomorrow may be too late, for one day, you will breathe your last.

Don't let that day come upon you without Him.

TRUSTING IN HIS UNFAILING LOVE...

He does not delight in the strength of the horse;
He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man.
The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him,
In those who hope in His mercy.--Psalm 147:10-11


To My Beloved Daughters 


I so love this.  What an encouragement for us to place our trust in Him!  Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him and hope in His mercy.  Our soul waits for Him...He is our help and our shield. Our hearts will rejoice in Him because we have trusted in His holy name. 


Our God's eyes search to and fro over the entire earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal toward Him. He knows and sees our inward man.  When we give Him our hearts and place our trust in Him...we give Him the glory...we magnify His name on the earth. We can shout for joy and be glad because we favor His righteous cause...we can say continually, Let the Lord be magnified who takes pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.  We who know we are wretched, poor, miserable, blind and naked can magnify His name by clinging to Him!  Are you seeing His mercy and grace to us in this.  How kind and tenderhearted of our Father to make the one thing that we really need to do anyway because of our wretched estate, the thing that glorifies His name.  Oh, but how we resist our weakness and fraility!  How often do we say in our own pride and arrogance instead,  I am rich and in need of nothing.  

Beloved, the God who made heaven and earth is the God of the poor and needy...of the broken and contrite heart. He delights when we trust in Him...when we depend on His wisdom and His power and place all of our hope in Him. Consolation...and I love that word because it reminds me of the kind of comfort you give a crying child...IS IN HIM.  Blessed are we if the God of Jacob is our help and our hope!!

Temporary Diplomacy...by Anna

2 Corinthians 5:20 “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” ~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Every now and then, I find myself taking life too seriously. Stressing over this and that as if it’s deciding to halt the expansion of the universe instead of deciding what clothes to wear this particular morning. Wishing a day had gone better—because I seem to think I have a finite number of days, when I have a limitless eternity of blissful ones ahead. Upset because of lost time with loved ones (which is when I remind myself ‘forever’ sounds long enough to get caught up on pretty much any amount of time). It doesn’t have to be like that. I don’t have to fret over lost days or which clothes or anything else (although the halt of further universe-expansion might be a bump in the road). What’s eighty, ninety years max compared to—again—ETERNITY? The Millennial Kingdom will way dwarf that—and His Thousand-Year Reign on earth is only the tip of the iceberg! 

We are citizens of Heaven. We don’t belong here—not in this running-down, entropy-filled universe. We are ambassadors—of Christ—and our job is simply to save as many as we can from Hell before our brief stay here is over and we’re Recalled—back home! The only things that really matter here, then, is to do what we’ve been sent to do—everything else is fairly extraneous. There are, of course, things you need to do to survive—eat, drink, provide for your family—and there are pleasures here that, although mere shadows of Home, God has put here specially for His weary ambassadors, so we generally don’t get bored. But, caught up in these ‘extraneous’ things, we tend to forget (consciously, at least) that eating, drinking, sleeping, working, and playing—you know, having a life—is not your main job. We forget that life here is a stopover before true Life, a ‘night at a noisy inn’ (Spurgeon’s take) ‘before heading for home’. 

That means that, if you’re a believer, your life here on earth can be, well, hell on earth (pardon the redundancy), you could lose everything and everyone that you cared about—and, in the long run, it wouldn’t matter. It would count as less than a bad day—a bad hour, maybe—in joyful Infinity with your Lord.

I take life too seriously. I forget to take Life anywhere near seriously enough.

Dire Straits...

Matthew 8:26-27  And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, "Save us, Lord' we are perishing!  He said to them, Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?  Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.  The men were amazed, and said, "What kind of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?  

The disciples turn to Christ here in desperate need...Save us, Lord, we are perishing!  There was nothing else to do and nothing else to try...they were at the end of whatever human means they could employ to save themselves.  Jesus was in the boat with them...they could see Him and had already seen so many of the mighty works He had done and yet it still was not enough to calm their fear...God knows our frames...He knows we are weak and frail...and so very fearful in our flesh.

When we are up against that proverbial wall or in the midst of that terrible storm with no where to go and no human means to help even we as believers will cry out...Lord, where are you..wake up...can't you see I need You...can't You see I am perishing???  Why are you asleep...I am perishing!!  Don't You care?  Fear always springs from a lack of faith.  Our trust in His perfect love is what is needed to quell those fears.

O Lord God of hosts,
Who is mighty like You, O Lord?
 Your faithfulness also surrounds You. You rule the raging of the sea;
When its waves rise, You still them--Psalm 89:8-9

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear,
Even though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;  Though its waters roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with its swelling.--Psalm 46:1-3

Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters, They see the works of the Lord,
 And His wonders in the deep. For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea. They mount up to the heavens,
They go down again to the depths;
Their soul melts because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
And are at their wits’ end. Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,
 And He brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm,
So that its waves are still.  Then they are glad because they are quiet;
 So He guides them to their desired haven.--Psalm 107:27-30

Our God will see us through each and every storm we will face in this life by His great power and wonderful love. Trusting in that reality, however, in our humanness is so hard!  Even when we see His unmistakable hand in our lives...even when He has done amazing things on our behalf we still struggle...we still doubt...we still fear. His love and compassion may be encompassing us and yet we still are fearing.  1 John 4:18 says this:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Fear involves torment...in Christ's love there is no torment.  Romans 8:1 tells us that "there is. therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." Beloved, there is no reason to fear...even if we perish.  He is our guide even unto death and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord forever. He can take care and will take care of His children...He will see them through.