Victorious Christian Living Newsletter – November 2010 Edition
Learn How to Live a Victorious Christian Life and Seek the Heart of God!
This issue includes:
1 Article From Me
Something to Think About
Interesting Bible Facts
A Powerful Story
Favorite Article from My Blog
Links to My Other Sites
Video of the Month
Obedience and Misunderstanding
I have found that every lesson that God desires to teach me is not always pleasurable. I have learned much from my valley experiences but I certainly thank God that I don’t have to stay in the valley all the time.
Being a Christian for most of my life, I knew that God expected me to read the Bible and obey what its words told me to do. At first I used the excuse that it was just too hard to change, but God didn’t let me get away with that for very long. If He could send His totally Sinless Son to die for sins that He had not commited, how could I possibly tell God that I wouldn’t be obedient to what His Word told me to do.
God expects obedience from His children, and He expects us to obey whether others understand or not. His way of doing things is much different than the way man thinks they should be done. He can see the big picture and has an awesome plan for each child of God. The only problem is that many times since we can’t see things through God’s eyes, we think that what He tells us to do doesn’t make much sense.
I Corinthians 3: 19
For this world’s wisdom is foolishness (absurdity and stupidity) with God, for it is written, He lays hold of the wise in their [own] craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts and reasonings of the [humanly] wise and recognizes how futile they are. AMP
I Corinthians 1: 27 – 29
For God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame.
And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are,
So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God. AMP
So according to the above verses, even the smartest people on earth don’t have a clue how God thinks. He has everything totally under control, but many times it doesn’t look that way from where we are standing.
Here are two examples from the Bible where God promised victory, but in a way that no human would ever think about.
JOSHUA AND JERICHO
When God told Joshua that He would help Him win the victory over Jericho, I’m sure it never entered into his mind about the way it would actually happen.
In verse 2 He told Joshua that He had already given Jericho to them along with its king and troops. Now all he had to do was follow the instructions God gave.
Here are his instructions from God in verses 3 – 5 from The Message Bible:
March around the city, all your soldiers.
Circle the city once and repeat this for 6 days.
Have 7 priests carry 7 ram’s horn trumpets in front of the Chest. (The Chest was the Ark of the Covenant.)
On the 7th day march around the city 7 times with the priests blowing away on the trumpets.
And then, a long blast on the ram’s horn – when you hear that, all the people are to shout at the top of their lungs. The city wall will collapse at once;
Then all the people are to enter, every man straight on in.
Who would think God would actually choose to fight a battle with the singers going first and just walking around a city? It certainly never would have entered my mind.
MOSES AND THE RED SEA
The Israelites had left Egypt and had started their trek into the wilderness when they came upon the Red Sea. How would so many people and animals be able to cross it? So God came to Moses with a plan.
The path they had taken hadn’t caught God by surprise at all. In fact, He had led the Israelites there in order to reveal to them His Glory and show them that He would always take care of them if they would just follow Him and put Him first in their lives.
Exodus 14: 1 – 4
God spoke to Moses: Tell the Israelites to turn around and make camp at Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. Camp on the shore of the sea opposite Baal Zephon.
Pharaoh will think, ‘The Israelites are lost; they’re confused. The wilderness has closed in on them.’
Then I’ll make Pharaoh’s heart stubborn again and he’ll chase after them. And I’ll use Pharaoh and his army to put my Glory on display. Then the Egyptians will realize that I am God.
…..
So… God had already thought out this plan and wanted to also show the Egyptians that He was the ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD. I guess sometimes it is hard for us to see that we are not the only ones God wants to deal with. He died for every person in the world and wants them to see who He is.
In order to do that, we have to ask God to let us see things through His eyes, not just look at things from our own perspective.
There are many more instances in the Bible where God told people to do things that made absolutely no sense to them at the time, but when they obeyed they saw the wondrous Glory of God give them victory before their eyes. They could excitedly talk of these things to their children and granchildren.
Joshua and Moses were ordinary people just like you and me. The defining moments in both of their lives were when they decided to take God at His Word even though His plan of action didn’t make complete sense to their physical mind. They had both gotten to the point that they had seen enough of the Character of God that they could trust His plan to bring forth victory in spite of them not understanding how it would work.
They had problems and struggles just as we do today, but somehow they got past their own SELF and the fleshly needs that went with it and consecrated their life to God to live and walk in obedience.
Don’t try to make things work out your way any more. Give your problems, trials, struggles, and everyday life to God and let Him work it out according to His plan. Who knows what He will tell you to do, but I can pretty much assure you that you won’t be able to guess which way God will handle things.
Life certainly won’t be dull if you will set your heart and mind to walk in obedience to God!
Something To Think About
Tea on the Wall
In his book, How to be Born Again, Billy Graham writes:
There is a well-known story of some men in Scotland who had spent the day fishing. That evening they were having tea in a little inn. One of the fishermen, in a characteristic gesture to describe the size of the fish that got away, slung out his hands just as the little waitress was getting ready to set the cup of tea at his place.
The hand and the teacup collided, dashing the tea against the whitewashed walls. Immediately an ugly brown stain began to spread over the wall.
The man who did it was very embarrassed and apologized profusely, but one of the other guests jumped up and said, “Never mind.”
Pulling a pen from his pocket, he began to sketch around the ugly brown stain. Soon there emerged a picture of a magnificent royal stag with his antlers spread. That artist was Sir Edwin Landseer, England’s foremost painter of animals.
This story has always beautifully illustrated to me the fact that if we confess not only our sins but our mistakes to God, He can make out of them something for our good and His glory.
Sometimes it’s harder to confess our mistakes and stupidities to God than it is our sins. Mistakes and stupidities seem so dumb, whereas sin seems to more or less be an outcropping of our human nature.
But Romans 8: 28 tells us that if they are committed to God He can make them work together for our good and His glory.
A Little Brown Cork
A little brown cork fell in the path of a whale
Who lashed it down with his angry tail.
But in spite of its blows it quickly arose,
And floated serenely before his nose.
Said the cork to the whale:
“You may flap and sputter and frown,
But you never, never can keep me down;
For I’m made of the stuff
That is buoyant enough
To float instead of to drown.
Are you buoyant enough to always float no matter what comes your way?
Interesting Bible Facts
TENT – An arab tent is called beit, or house. Its covering consists of stuff, about three quarters of a yard broad, made of black goats-hair, laid parallel with the tent’s length. This is sufficient to resist even the heaviest rain.
The tent-poles or columns are usually 9 in number, placed in 3 groups; but many tents have only one pole, others 2 or 3. The ropes which hold the tent in its place are fastened, not to the tent-cover itself, but to loops consisting of a leathern thong tied to the ends of a stick, round which is twisted a piece of old cloth, whch is itself sewed to the tent-cover.
The ends of the tent-ropes are fastened to short sticks or pins, which are driven into the ground with a mallet. Round the back and sides of the tent runs a piece of stuff removable at pleasure to admit air.
The tent is divided into two apartments, separated by a carpet partition drawn across the middle of the tent and fastened to the three middle posts. When the pasture near an encampment is exhausted, the tents are taken down, packed on camels and removed. In choosing places for encampment, the Arabs prefer the neighborhood of trees, for the sake of the shade and coolness which they afford.
TARES – There can be little doubt that the zizania of the parable of Matthew 13: 25 denotes the weed called “darnel.” The darnel before it comes into ear is very similar in appearance to wheat; hence the command that the zizania should be left to the harvest, lest while men plucked up the tares “”they should root up also the wheat with them.”
Dr. Stanley, however, speaks of women and children picking up from the wheat in the cornfields of Samaria the tall green stalks, still called by the Arabs “zuwan.”
These stalks, if sown designedly through the fields, would be inseparable from the wheat, from which, even when growing naturally and by chance, they are at first sight hardly distinguishable.
The grain is in just the proper stage to illustrate the parable. In those parts where the grain has “headed out” the tares would do the same, and then a child cannot mistake them for wheat or barley; but where both are less developed, the closest scrutiny will often fail to detect them.
Even the farmers, who in this country generally weed their fields, do not attempt to separate the one from the other. The grains of the “darnel” if eaten, produce convulsions, and even death.
TAXING – The English word now conveys to us more distinctly the notion of a tax or tribute actually levied; but it appears to have been used in the 16th century for the simple assessment of a subsidy upon the property of a given county, or the registration of the people for the purpose of a poll-tax.
Two distinct registrations, or taxings, are mentioned in the New Testament, both of them by St. Luke. The first is said to have been the result of an edict of the emperor Augustus, that “all the world (Roman Empire) should be taxed,” ans is connected by the evangelist with the name of Cyrennius Quirinus. The second and most important, is distinctly associated, in point of time, with the revolt of Judas of Galilee.
(Taken from Smith’s Bible Dictionary)
A Powerful Story
Problems = Opportunties
In 2700 BC Emperor Whing Tee asked his wife Ce Ling Shee to try to find out what was damaging his Mulberry trees. The Empress first noticed that a drab-colored moth was laying tiny eggs on a Mulberry leaf, each hatching into a caterpillar that ejected a thread for three days which is wrapped around its body until it formed a cocoon.
She dropped the cocoon into hot water and saw a single thread begin unwinding itself. She had discovered silk. The Empress observed that fineness and beauty of the silk thread. She unbound it completely and found it to be ½ mile long from that single cocoon. And she thought that these fine threads might be made into cloth.
Soon a loom was developed on which they could be woven. That silk cloth that was woven on their loom was in such demand that later Romans are said to have weighed the silk before buying it and then paid an equal weight of gold for it.
For more than 3,000 years only the Chinese knew the secret of silk. Then in AD 522, Roman Emperor Justinian sent two monks to buy silk from China. The monks brought back more than silk. They personally broke Chinese monopoly on silk by smuggling back into Europe two silk worm eggs and Mulberry tree seeds in their hollow monks’ staff.
They were apparently the first industrial pirates. From these two silkworm eggs the Roman Empire acquired enough silk worms to make it partially independent from China.
Like so many serendipitous events, the discovery of silk came while trying to solve a problem. Before long the business of growing Mulberry trees was for the sole purpose of providing moths with leaves on which to lay their eggs so that the production of silk could be increased.
Nothing like silk had ever appeared before in fine fabrics. It brought about a world of revolution in fashions. The very word silk brings to mind something that is soft, or luxurious. The wealthy of the world have always dressed themselves in silken clothes.
It’s important to look for solutions instead of trying to avoid problems, so when you have a problem of some kind, remember that you also have an equal opportunity.
My Favorite Blog Post For The Month
God Can Turn Interruption Into Opportunity
There is a story told of a Mr. Guthrie in England who lost his way one night on a moor. His companions went on without him. When at last he was able to rejoin them, he showed them that it was a blessed piece of providence that he had lost his way.
This was his story:
I wandered across the moor till I came to a little cottage where was a sick and dying woman. The priest was just administering to her extreme unction, and when he went out I went in. She was troubled in mind, I told her the gospel, and she believed in Jesus. I found her in a state of nature, I preached the gospel to her until I saw her in a state of grace, and when I came away I left her in a state of glory.
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When your day is planned to the minute, it leaves no extra room for an interruption which might become an opportunity to do good for someone else or tell them about Jesus.
During the three years Jesus ministered on earth, He was interrupted many times by someone who had a great need. Many needed physical healing, and some just wanted to get to know Him on a more personal level; still others had a life that was so miserable they somehow knew He could make it better if they could just get to Him.
We find in the New Testament that the people would sit and listen to Him teach for hours and even days. They cleared their agenda to be in the presence of THE ONE they knew could change their life.
I certainly don’t want to minimize the importance of getting alone with God and having a quiet time with Him each day. You shouldn’t have so many interruptions that you have to spend every moment dealing with them and then have no time for fellowship. Jesus made it a point to get away by Himself at times so He could fellowship with the Father.
But we as Christians should always be open to any opportunity to let our light shine for Jesus. What seems like a distraction to us might be the catalyst that enables another person to turn around and go in a different direction that will eventually change their life for the better.
Remember that God’s open door can sometimes look like just an interruption if you are not tuned in to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
If you are tuned in, though, what a wild ride you will have. Life certainly will never be boring.
To check out my blog go to Who God Is
Please check out my other sites by clicking on the links below:
Handbook for Victorious Christian Living
Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living
Video of the Month
Mighty to Save
by Michael W. Smith
Our God truly is a mighty and awesome God who desires to give His Children His very best!
Click here to go to the video!
That’s it for this newsletter. I hope that you have been truly inspired and blessed. I pray that each word written will minister to you in whatever way God desires.
It is also my prayer that God will bless you and your family and start to truly show you Who He Is. He is far greater than anything you could ever imagine.
In Christ,
Cathy Deaton
