Victorious Christian Living Newsletter
Welcome to the December 2011 Edition
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
Learn To Walk In The Spiritual Rain
Deuteronomy 11: 8-14
Deu 11:8 Soon you will cross the Jordan River, and if you obey the laws and teachings I’m giving you today, you will be strong enough to conquer the land
Deu 11:9 that the LORD promised your ancestors and their descendants. It’s rich with milk and honey, and you will live there and enjoy it for a long time.
Deu 11:10 It’s better land than you had in Egypt, where you had to struggle just to water your crops.
Deu 11:11 But the hills and valleys in the promised land are watered by rain from heaven,
Deu 11:12 because the LORD your God keeps his eye on this land and takes care of it all year long.
Deu 11:13 The LORD your God commands you to love him and to serve him with all your heart and soul. If you obey him,
Deu 11:14 he will send rain at the right seasons, so you will have more than enough food, wine, and olive oil, and there will be plenty of grass for your cattle. CEV
During a recent really nice rain (the kind that is light enough the dry ground can soak it up before it gets a chance to run off,) the Holy Spirit showed me an awesome word picture. It was sort of like a light bulb coming on that gave me a clear understanding about the above verses.
God told the Israelites that if they would obey His commands and love and serve Him with all their hearts, He would take care of them by sending the right amount of rain from heaven at just the right time to take care of their needs. The rain they received would be perfect for the crops they were growing and would soak in for maximum benefit and yield.
When we have been in the middle of a drought, I have seen it rain so hard that the ground could not possibly soak up the rain fast enough and the majority of it just ran off to lower ground. If we got three inches, we may have only received the benefit of half the rain because of the run-off.
God wants to send His best spiritual rain into your life so it can always be fertile and open for growing maximum yields of fruit. He never wants the fertile ground of your heart to become dry, hard, rocky, and devoid of life-giving water that keeps it ready to plant a crop at any time.
We as Christians should always keep our mind, heart and ears open to hear the Holy Spirit and walk in obedience to His direction. It is then that the truth can soak in and change us from the inside, to be a powerful and fruit-filled Christian who can do great things for the Kingdom of God.
To “soak truth in” means to meditate and absorb a little at a time. Your mind always wants to rebel at something that is very different from what you know now. It tries to justify what you are doing now as right and the new thing as wrong, with its purpose being to throw you off and make you go in the wrong direction.
Let the word soak in and truly change your life by doing it slowly and surely. We usually wish we could grow and mature much faster than we do, but slowly and surely will always get the job done much better and the growth you have accomplished will last forever.
The Holy Spirit wants your heart to stay fertile and tilled so that it will be very easy for Him to give you direction in a certain area and know that He won’t have to spend days, weeks, or months trying to get you to think about things another way. He never wants you to get stuck in a certain way of doing things and be so stuck that you won’t consider doing them another way.
But…the Holy Spirit will never lead you to do something that is contrary to the Word of God. Even though God works in a much different way than we might think, He would never lead you to do something that is not in alignment with His Word. It might not make sense to you, but it always makes perfect sense to God because He can see the whole picture.
Make the choice now that you will be open to hear God and walk in obedience to what He tells you to do.
Something To Think About
The Face of Christ
In his book, When There Is No Miracle, Robert Wise wrote about hearing a man named Cecil Henson tell his “death story” many times. In 1940, Cecil was pronounced dead for 20 or 30 minutes, and after his resuscitation and recovery, he was a different man, no longer angry and now ready to pour himself into the raising of his young son Van (who later became a successful oral surgeon.)
Cecil said that during his period of “twilight” he encountered Jesus in person. In those moments he looked fully into the face of the risen Christ and saw Him in all His glory.
Robert Wise said, It is Cecil’s description of His face that has gripped my imagination through the years. He saw the face of Jesus as a marvelous mosaic made up of a hundred small faces.
Each piece added a shade or line to the total picture. So in looking into this composite face he could see the countenance of Christ. But as he looked, he could see a hundred parts.
The startling realization was that the mosaic pieces were not tile, metal, or glass. Each small section was a clear, distinct, cameo of someone’s face. As Cecil stared fixedly at the face there was a pulsating fluctuation between the total face and the cameo sections. One minute he could see the Face and then in the next he was aware of hundreds of faces.
In awe Cecil began to recognize what was revealed in each of those cameos. They were all people he knew. Moreover, they were all people who had loved him and given him kindness during his life. He could see an aunt and an uncle.
And there was his mother and on the other side his father’s face moved into focus. School teachers, friends, associates, people who had already become part of conveying the human picture of Christ.
Overwhelmed in worship and amazement, Cecil bowed before the risen Lord. In the lingering moments of that experience, anxieties, fears and doubts were healed. When Cecil “returned” to start his life again, the face of Jesus guided him through the years ahead. Christ and the Cross remained sufficient for him until, over 20 years later, he died.
Interesting Bible Facts
Chain
Chains were used,
1.As badges of office;
2.For ornament;
3.For confining prisoners.
4.The gold chain placed about Josephs neck, and that promised to Daniel, are instances of the first use. In Ezekiel 16:11 the chain is mentioned as the symbol of sovereignty.
5.Chains for ornamental purposes were worn by men as well as women. The Midianites adorned the necks of their camels with chains. Step-chains were attached to the ankle-rings.
6.The means adopted for confining prisoners among the Jews were fetters similar to our handcuffs. Among the Romans the prisoner was handcuffed to his guard, and occasionally to two guards.
Cooking
As meat did not form an article of ordinary diet among the Jews, the art of cooking was not carried to any perfection. Few animals were slaughtered except for purposes of hospitality or festivity.
The proceedings on such occasions appear to have been as follows: –On the arrival of a guest, the animal, either a kid, lamb or calf, was killed, its throat being cut so that the blood might be poured out, it was then flayed, and was ready for either roasting or boiling. In the former case the animal was preserved entire, and roasted either over a fire, of wood, or perhaps in an oven, consisting simply of a hole dug in the earth, well heated, and covered up. Boiling, however, was the more usual method of cooking.
Citizenship
The use of this term in Scripture has exclusive reference to the usages of the Roman empire. The privilege of Roman citizenship was originally acquired in various ways, as by purchase, by military services, by favor or by manumission.
The right once obtained descended to a man’s children. Among the privileges attached to citizenship we may note that a man could not be bound or imprisoned without a formal trial, still less be scourged. Another privilege attaching to citizenship was the appeal from a provincial tribunal to the emperor at Rome.
(Taken from Smith’s Bible Dictionary)
A Powerful Story
The Story of John Pounds
It was a terrible fall, and it sickened those who saw it. John Pounds, a tall, muscular teen laborer at the docks of Portsmouth, England, slipped and plunged from the top of a ship’s mast, pitching headfirst into the bowels of the vessel.
When fellow workers reached him, he was nothing but a mass of broken bones. For two years he lay in bed as his bones healed crookedly. His pain never ceased. Out of boredom, he began to read the Bible.
At length, John crawled from bed hoping to find something he could do with his life. A shoemaker hired him, and day after day, John sat at his cobbler’s bench, a Bible open on his lap. Soon he was born again.
John ultimately gathered enough money to purchase his own little shoe shop, and one day he developed a pair of surgical boots for his crippled nephew Johnny, whom he had taken in.
Soon John was making corrective shoes for other children, and his little cobbler’s shop became a miniature children’s hospital.
As John’s burden for children grew, he began receiving homeless ones, feeding them, teaching them to read, and telling them about the Lord. His shop became known as “The Ragged School,” and John would limp around the waterfront, food in his pockets, looking for more children to tend.
During his lifetime, John Pounds rescued 500 children from despair and led every one of them to Christ. Moreover, his work became so famous that a “Ragged School Movement” swept England, and a series of laws were passed to establish schools for poor children in John’s honor – boys homes, girls homes, day schools, and evening schools were started, along with Bible classes in which thousands heard the Gospel.
When John collapsed and died on New Year’s Day, 1839, while tending to a boy’s ulcerated foot, he was buried in a church yard on High Street. All England mourned, and a monument was erected over his grace, reading: “Thou shalt be blessed, for they could not recompense thee.
My Favorite Blog Post For The Month
Prayer Is The True Gauge Of Spiritual Power
Charles Spurgeon delivered an awesome essay on prayer in September of 1871, and things have not changed since then as to what he said about your spiritual condition as it directly relates to your prayer life. It is an awesome and convicting read.
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When a man becomes cold, indifferent, and careless, one of the first things that will suffer will be his devotion. When a sick man is in a decline his lungs suffer and his voice; and so when a Christian is in a spiritual decline the breath of prayer is affected, and the cry of supplication becomes weak. Prayer is the true gauge of spiritual power. To restrain prayer is dangerous, and of deadly tendency. You may depend upon it that, take it for all in all, what you are upon your knees you are really before your God. What the Pharisee and the Publican were in prayer was the true criterion of their spiritual state.
You may maintain a decent repute among men, but it is a small matter to be judged of man’s judgment, for men see only the surface, while the Lord’s eyes pry into the recesses of the soul. If he sees that you are prayerless he makes small account of your attendance at religious meetings, or your loud professions of conversion. If you are a man of earnest prayer, and especially if the spirit of prayer be in you, so that in addition to certain seasons of supplication your heart habitually talks with God, things are right with you; but if this be not the case, and your prayers be “hindered,” there is something in your spiritual system which needs to be ejected, or somewhat lacking which ought at once to be supplied. “Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life;” and living prayers are among those issues.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “Hindrances To Prayer,” delivered September 13, 1871.
To check out my blog go to Who God Is
Please check out my other sites by clicking on the links below:
How to Deal with a Selfish Person
Handbook for Victorious Christian Living
Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living
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
