Victorious Christian Living Newsletter
Welcome to the December 2008 Edition
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This issue includes:
2 of My Featured Teaching Articles
Quotes for Inspiration
A Bible Quiz Question
Interesting Bible Facts
A Powerful Story
Favorite Articles from My Blog
Links to My Other Sites
An Awesome Poem – Don’t Quit
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How Much Do You Give of Yourself to Others?
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. -Winston Churchill-
There are very few days that go perfectly smooth without even the smallest interruption to throw you off schedule. In a perfect world, you are able to check off every item on your “to-do list” for the day, and you feel good that you have accomplished so much. You feel like patting yourself on the back for a job well done.
But what happens when your well laid out plans are interrupted by someone who needs an extra few minutes of your time? Can you give that extra few minutes cheerfully or do you give it begrudgingly thinking that now your schedule is blown for the day? You will feel much more fulfilled if you have a genuine interest in helping others rather than just checking off a “to-do list” of your own agenda.
A person is truly happy who can invest in the lives of others, but the only way you can do it without being totally consumed is to let the Holy Spirit lead you in what you should do.
You only have so much free time after your job, going to church, spending time with family, etc., so you must choose wisely how you will spend the remaining time left in your week. God wants you to be well balanced and organized so you can get more done during the day with less effort.
You Must use Wisdom when Helping Others
You must use a great deal of wisdom in helping others, or you will end up totally spent and have no time to do things that are important. If someone constantly needs your attention, then you have to draw some kind of line on how much you can help them.
The Holy Spirit can show you when you need to say NO. Helping others does not mean that you need to turn your own self into a doormat and end up frustrated and burned-out.
How to Efficiently Help Others
Always be in the present. Don’t be doing one thing and thinking about what you have to get done for the rest of the day.
When you start to get overwhelmed, ask the Holy Spirit to help you concentrate fully on the task at hand, get it done and go on to something else. He can keep your thinking on track, and keep you organized.
Through God, you will be able to invest your life in helping others and also do the things you need to get done each day.
Start off each day with the attitude that if somebody asks for your help, you will be open to however the Holy Spirit leads you to help them, even if it has to be NO. That way you are free of guilt because you know you are doing the right thing.
You can really make an impact on the lives of others in this way. Then when God wants you to help somebody in a really big way, you will have the time to do it because you won’t be worn out and frustrated from overextending yourself.
Let your life be defined more by what you give and do for others than what you do for yourself.
By Cathy Deaton
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Forgiveness is Bold, but it clears the Tunnel between You and God!
Forgiveness is a strong move to make, like turning your shoulders sideways to walk quickly on a crowded sidewalk. It’s your move.
-Unknown-
This is an incredibly good word picture of forgiveness. It is a very bold move on your part to forgive somebody who has done something bad to you even though they don’t deserve it or haven’t asked for it.
When you walk down the street, you are careful to avoid a collision with another person so that you can keep your momentum going as you are on your way to your destination. You learn to lean and dodge quickly when you are in a crowd so that you won’t get stalled.
If you think that everyone should move out of your way, you will probably be standing still for awhile or at least moving much slower than normal. The choice is always yours as to how you will handle the situation.
If you have asked Jesus to come into your heart, the Holy Spirit is there to guide you in everything you do. His job is to convict you of things that keep you from having a right relationship with God. He does His job well, but you must listen to and obey what He says.
Think of your relationship with God as a direct tunnel from you to Him. When you have unforgiveness in your heart, the tunnel gets like a drain that is clogged with hair, grease, rotten food, and all kinds of other nasty things; God can’t get through to you like He desires. When you are able to forgive the other person, repent of your sins and get forgiveness from God, the tunnel can become clean again.
Satan is always looking for something to make you stumble, trip, or fall. He will do whatever he can to make sure that you never achieve God’s Best. He wants you to be powerless, drug down, and defeated for all your Christian life.
The Secret to Victory
Don’t live by feelings alone; they will many times lead you astray. Your flesh wants to get involved when you have been wronged, and it naturally wants to fight back and make the other person pay; it is totally your choice as to whether you let it win.
Change is not an easy thing, because your flesh will fight you to its death. It is probably the biggest weapon that Satan has in his arsenal.
When you realize this, it is much easier to take control of the flesh. The Holy Spirit is there at all times to give you the strength you need for victory. God has wonderfully provided for His Children if they will receive what He has to offer.
Determine to think on the things of God, and He will give you the strength to overcome the flesh. You will realize that in the end “making someone pay” does not make you feel as fulfilled as you thought it would.
Don’t let anything block the tunnel between you and God. It will never be worth it in the long run.
By Cathy Deaton
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Quotes for Inspiration
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God’s will.
Frederick W Robertson
Who riseth from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
George Meredith
Pray
Until
Something
Happens
Anonymous
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A Bible Quiz Question
What church repeatedly sent gifts to Paul to help in his missionary work?
The answer will be given in the newsletter next month.
The answer to the 11-2008 newsletter quiz question is Malta (Acts 28 1, 3)
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Interesting Bible Facts
GIFT – This is a formal business in the East. You are compelled by custom to accept and to return a gift from any person, or take the consequences of an insult by refusing. There are 15 names for gift, but the main ones are: MINHAH, a gift from one to a superior; MASOTH is from a king or any superior; NISSETH is similar to Masoth; BERACHAH, blessing or complimentary; SHOCHAD, bribe; MATTAN and MATTANAH, a present; METTATH, false gift.
It was no less an insult to neglect to give a present when custom led one to expect such a mark of respect.
GIANTS - The Hebrew word is nephilim, rephaim. Persons of great strength. The Nephillim were living in Canaan at the time of the Exodus. The sons of Anak were afterwards identified with the same race, living at Hebron. The Rephaim were a tribe living in Canaan, Og being a king of the branch on the east of Jordan. The same name was in later times given to any large and strong people. The Emim and Zamzummim were also of the giants. These merely strong men gave way before the skilful, and disappear from the history of the cultivated people. Goliath and his brother are the last mentioned.
GALLERY – in Hebrew, ceiling, rafters, gutters, pillar for the support of a house
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A Powerful Story
The Keys to Life
In a prayer letter to his supporters, evangelist Billy Graham told this story:
I recently heard the story of a mother in an African nation who came to Christ and grew strong in her commitment and devotion to the Lord. As so often happens, however, this alienated her from her husband, and over the years he grew to despise and hate her new devotion to Christ.
His anger and bitterness reached their climax when he decided to kill his wife, their two children and himself, unable to live in such self-inflicted misery. But he needed a motive. He decided that he would accuse her of stealing his precious keys – the keys were to the bank, the house, and the car.
Early one afternoon he left his bank and headed for the tavern. His route took him across a footbridge extended over the headwaters of the Nile River. He paused above the river and dropped the keys. He spent all afternoon drinking and carousing.
Later that afternoon, his wife went to the fish market to buy the evening meal. She purchased a large Nile perch. As she was gutting the fish, to her astonishment, in its belly were her husband’s keys.
How had they gotten there? What were the circumstances? She did not know, but she cleaned them up and hung them on the hook.
Sufficiently drunk, the young banker came home that night and pounded open the front door shouting, “Woman, where are my keys?”
Already in bed, she got up, picked them off the hook in the bedroom, and handed them to her husband. When he saw the keys, by his own testimony he immediately became sober and was instantly converted.
He fell on his knees sobbing, asked for forgiveness, and confessed Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
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My Favorite Blog Posts
Faith: The Foundation for Real Things
When you decide to do weight lifting, you either use your own equipment or go to the gym. Then you decide on a plan of action that coincides with your desired effect. Lastly, you must be disciplined enough not to let other things distract you from your goal. If you don’t do these things, you probably won’t attain the lean, toned, and muscled body that you started out to achieve.
Hebrews 11: 1 - Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
If you do your weight lifting exercises correctly and diligently, it won’t be long before it is noticeable that your plan is working; you can see it with your own eyes.
True faith works in the same way as exercise because it helps you to become a person with whom God is pleased. The difference between the two is you can’t always see the results of faith immediately. It is something you do on a daily basis that is between you and God. He wants you to learn to know Him so well that you have no doubts that what He has told you will come to pass. You just believe Him – PERIOD.
In the Greek substance means a setting under (support), figuratively concrete essence; confidence.
Faith gives reality or real substance to things hoped for. It is a basis, or foundation, for support. It is the real thing.
God desires your obedience, but He wants something even more – your ability to believe you can receive from Him BEFORE you have seen it. You can’t just order God to do whatever you want, but when He tells you something, He wants you to know His Character so well that you have no doubt that whatever He told you will come to pass. Then when it does, you are not surprised because you have been waiting for it to happen, you just didn’t know exactly when it would happen.
God loves you much more than you could ever imagine. Trust Him with everything going on in your life right now – He wants to meet your every need.
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God Answers the Prayer of a Righteous Person even Years Later
In the 1930s, Stalin ordered a purge of all Bibles and all believers in the former Soviet Union. Millions of Bibles were confiscated and multitudes of believers were sent to the gulags (prison camps), where most died for being ‘enemies of the state.’ In Stavropol, Russia, this order was carried out with a vengeance.
Recently, the CoMission ministry, which Campus Crusade for Christ sponsored, sent a team to Stavropol. The city’s history was not known at that time. But when our team was having difficulties getting Bibles shipped from Moscow, someone mentioned the existence of a warehouse outside of town where these confiscated Bibles had been stored ever since Stalin’s day.
After much prayer by the team, one member finally got up the courage to go to the warehouse and ask the officials if the Bibles were still there. Sure enough, they were. Then the CoMission asked if the Bibles could be removed and distributed again to the people of Stavropol. The answer was ‘yes’!
The next day the CoMission team returned with a truck and several Russian people to help load the Bibles. One helper was a young man, who was a skeptical, hostile, and agnostic collegian who had come only for the day’s wages.
As they were loading the Bibles, one team member noticed that the young man had disappeared. Eventually, then found him in a corner of the warehouse weeping.
He had slipped away hoping to quietly take a Bible. What he found shook him to the core. The inside page of the Bible he picked up had the handwritten signature of his own grandmother! It had been her Bible! Out of the many thousands of Bibles still left in that warehouse, he stole the one belonging to his grandmother — a woman persecuted for her faith all her life.
No wonder he was weeping — God had just dramatically revealed Himself to this young man. His grandmother had no doubt prayed for him and for her city. Her prayers had followed him, and now this young man’s life has been transformed by the very Bible that his grandmother found so dear.
To check out my blog go to Who God Is
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Please check out my other sites by clicking on the links below:
Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living
Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – Practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life
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Don’t Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out.
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are -
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit -
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.
Author Unknown
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That’s it for this newsletter. I hope that you have been truly inspired and blessed. I have prayed about each word written that it would minister 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,
