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Why are we the only ones providing a snack each week for the children? Can’t someone else do it this week?” Asked the man.
She was young, and living in a country where the simplest things you want, cost too much. So when she visited the church down the street, and after they shared the hope of Jesus, they passed out cookies and a fruit drink. She couldn’t believe it. She thought the pastor must have been the richest man in the world! She went back, week after week. In fact, she told her older sister, and she started going. This continued, but then one day, the message became the nourishment she wanted and she asked Jesus into her heart.
“I will gladly buy cookies and fruit drink every week,” repented the man.
What are you willing to do for someone else, so that they might hear the good news of Jesus Christ dying on a cross for our wrong doing, and the hope of eternal life?
9 Let us not grow weary or become discouraged in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap, if we do not give in.” (Gal. 6:9 AMP)
Copyright © 2019 Mark Brady. All rights reserved.
Satan is religious. He loves churches that try to get you to follow a list of dos and don’ts knowing when you fail, you will probably hate yourself and possibly hate God. Satan religiously tries to get you to believe the lie that you have to follow a list of rules. The problem is simple: you are trusting man to tell you what God desires from you instead of finding out for yourself.
Love is not premeditated– it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without even realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we have been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous love was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is only discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.
Here in the Philippines, they print pictures on the packages of cigarettes, that show what could happen if you smoke. Is it effective? I don’t know, but I don’t see a lot of smoking going on. Of course that could be due to the cost of cigarettes.
Because it worked for an individual, a certain way, in a certain amount of time, doesn’t mean it will for you. I’ve noticed over the years, people will flock to hear a person tell how God moved in their life to reach others. Or to hear what they did before God healed them. There is nothing wrong with listening to someone give their testimony, but people think if they duplicate what the person did, it will happen for them, so they take notes, and list each step as if it’s a formula or a recipe. They think, “Well, if I pray as much as they did, or quit my job to fully devote my time to God.” The danger is this; if the individual does all the same steps, but doesn’t get the same result then they can get discouraged, dissatisfied, disgruntled and disappointed with themselves or even with God.
I almost blew it! What if I hadn’t of done what I had committed to God to do? I had told him a few years ago I would do my best to never miss a deadline to writing a blog. If I had what would have happened? I know one thing, the end result wouldn’t have been the same.
brady, mark a. 