Victorious Christian Living Newsletter
Hi friend,
Welcome to the June 2008 Edition of the Newsletter.
This newsletter has been set up on my blog so that it will be easier for you to read archived newsletters from the past. Please feel free to forward this to a friend.
I pray about each item that is included, because God knows exactly what we each need to help us grow into the person He wants us to be.
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This issue includes:
2 of My Featured Teaching Articles
Quotes for Inspiration
A Bible Quiz Question
Christian Humor (because we don’t laugh nearly enough)
Interesting Bible Facts
A True Story
Suggested Bible Readings
Favorite Articles from My Blog
Links to My Other Sites
Video of the Month
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True Wisdom will Stand the Test of Time
Luke 7: 35
But wisdom is justified of all her children.
This is a passage where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. They had rejected the fact that He was the Son of God, because they had their own expectations of a “warrior king” that would be sent to physically fight for their freedom from the Egyptians.
God had worked in that way before, and they expected him to do so again. Their thinking was so concrete on the subject that they would not be open to the “new thing” that God was doing for His people. They also did not want to give up their high positions of power and authority.
They first had a complaint that John the Baptist was a devil because he did not eat, act, and dress like everyone else. Then they tried to spread the rumor that Jesus was a glutton and winebibber because he tried to minister to the sinners who needed His salvation.
Jesus finally told them that wisdom can always be proven by the things that come from it in the future.
James 1: 5 says, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
The wisdom that a Christian receives and applies will stand the test of time. You must always take the revelation of the truth very seriously, though, to make totally sure that you have heard from God.
When you want something badly, it is very easy to justify your own fleshly feelings as pure truth. Your own opinion can sometimes be so strong that you can persuade yourself that the flesh is right.
When you ask for wisdom, you need to get rid of preconceived ideas of your own and be open to what God desires to reveal as His truth. You need to remember that you cannot see into the future, and you will never be able to see the “big picture” when you only look at things from your fleshly point of view.
When you always do things in the order that God has laid out, people will start to see that you are a person who has much discernment. They will know they can trust you because your wisdom has been “justified” and proven to be truth. God wants to bless a person like this because He knows He will be able to use them to do His work.
The Israelites were unable to see the great future that God had planned for them and their descendants. They wanted to do things the way they had always done them, because that was all they had known since Moses had taken them out of Egypt.
Don’t leave yourself in a box and think that God only has to operate in a certain way. He can choose anybody or anything that He desires to work on your behalf.
Ask Him for wisdom, and open your heart and mind to receive the wonderful truths He has for you.
By Cathy Deaton
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Excellence is a Habit
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
Excellence is one word that should sum up every Christian. We should desire to do our very best in everything we do each day.
A habit is something you acquire that is done automatically in a particular set of circumstances. You just react without even thinking about it, whether that reaction is good or bad.
If you are to make excellence a habit, you must thoroughly examine your actions and see whether they match what you desire. If they do not, you must make the choice to respond differently than you have in the past.
I think many Christians feel that they were just made a certain way and can never do anything to change that. An example would be a bad temper. They just accept that fact and expect others to do the same.
Each person has faults, but the Christian has the power to overcome them through the Blood of Jesus. He died on the cross so that we might be forgiven of sin and can have the power to defeat Satan in our lives.
When we feel that we have no option other than to “learn to live” with the fleshly faults, we are saying that God does not have the power to help us overcome them. I am certainly not saying that this will always be an easy thing to do, but “nothing is impossible with God.”
He wants to be able to take the junk out of your life, make it clean and holy before Him, and use you mightily for His Kingdom work which is eternal.
God looks at you and sees the great person you can become in Him. He sees all the many things He would like to accomplish with your life, and is the only one that can truly see into the future. He always wants the best for you.
If you have bad habits that you would like to turn into excellent ones, run to God and let Him show you what to do. He is ready to meet you wherever you are at this moment. All you have to do is ask.
Read the Bible every day and ask God to give you a passion for His Word.
Ask for guidance from the Holy Spirit and He will lead you into all truth.
Repent of any sin that God reveals to you, turn from it, and go in the other direction. Do it right then before pride sets in and you start to justify it.
Determine in your heart that you will make the right choice instead of acting upon your fleshly feelings.
It will not be easy at first, but if you continue doing excellent things instead of letting the flesh take control, you will start to see victory in your life. Don’t give up if you don’t see things happening right away. Just keep on doing the right thing, and your good harvest will surely come.
It is a great feeling to know that you can CHOOSE not to let the flesh control your actions.
By Cathy Deaton
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Quotes for Inspiration
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength.
A.J. Cronin
Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the New Year. The workshop of character is everyday life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost or won.
Maltbie D. Babcock
Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and the angels know of us.
Thomas Paine
Character is what you are in the dark.
Dwight L. Moody
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A Bible Quiz Question
What Hebrew king had 15 years added to his life because of his prayer to God?
The answer will be given in the newsletter next month. Hopefully you will be encouraged to do some digging into the Bible if you don’t already know the answer.
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Christian Humor
(because we do not laugh nearly enough!)
Three Notorious Characters
Dr. William Culbertson, president of Moody Bible Institute, shared the following story that happened in a Baptist Church in Indiana.
It seems that three rather notorious characters had been converted and were to be baptized. The whole community turned out. The little church had only one small dressing room which opened from the baptistery and was shielded from view only by a sheet hung over the entrance.
The floor was covered with linoleum.
On that not-to-be-forgotten night, the first candidate had been baptized and had gone up behind the sheet to change his clothes.
The second man was then baptized, and joined his companion in the little dressing room.
The third man was being baptized when the second man, wriggling out of his wet trousers, extricated one leg and gave a kick to free the other. His foot skidded on the wet linoleum floor, and into the baptistery he went – on top of the preacher and the third candidate.
He grabbed the sheet in desperation as he went, and carried it with him into the pool.
Meanwhile, the first man had removed all his wet clothes but had not yet put on any of his dry garments. When the sheet disappeared into the water, it left him standing before the congregation in his birthday suit.
He grabbed a chair and tried to hide behind it.
The lights had been turned low for the baptizing. Somebody yelled, “Turn out the lights!” An excited deacon turned them on full power.
It shouldn’t have happened but it did. Anything can happen at church and usually does.
Vance Havner, Threescore and Ten (Old Tappan, NH: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1973), 71-72.
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Interesting Bible Facts
The Megilloth
These were scrolls, or rolls, of five of the shorter books of the Old Testament which were read publicly during the annual festivals of the Jews. Below are the Megilloth and the feast at which the books were read:
1. Song of Solomon (Passover, Nisan 14)
2. Ruth (Pentecost, Sivan 6)
3. Lamentations (Day of Mourning for the Destruction of the Temple, Ab9)
4. Ecclesiastes (Tabernacles, Tishri, 15-21)
5. Esther (Purim, Adar 14-15)
Definitions
SACKCLOTH – A coarse stuff of a dark color often made of goat-hair and the coarse, black hair of the camel.
In great calamities or penitence, the Jews wore sackcloth about their bodies. The robe represented a sack, and was confined by a girdle of the same material.
In times of joy those who were clad in sackcloth took it off, and put on their usual clothing.
SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY – The distance between the tents and the ark in the camp, which was 2000 cubits. The common cubit of 18 inches would be 3000 feet, and the sacred cubit of 19.05 inches would be 4,762 feet. The English mile is 5,280 feet.
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A True Story
The Only Book Saved
Alexander Duff, the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland, got off to a rough start. He was young, only 23, and bright and innovative.
But on his way to India in 1829 with his new wife, he was shipwrecked – not once but twice! The most serious wreck occurred when his ship, the Lady Holland, was within a few miles of India.
At 10 PM, Duff was half-undressed when a shock and shudder ran through the vessel. He rushed to the deck where the captain met him with terrifying words, “Oh, she’s gone! She’s gone!”
The ship split apart, but a portion clung precariously to a reef. Through the night the passengers huddled in terror in the surviving portion, expecting every moment to be swept away. They were saved the next day, but their clothes and prized possessions were lost, including Duff’s entire library of 800 volumes.
Later, standing on shore and looking sadly toward the reef, Duff saw a small package bobbing atop the water. He watched and waited as it floated close enough for him to wade out and retrieve.
It was his Bible. Of all his precious books, it alone survived. His heart soared, for he took it as a sign from the Lord that this one book alone was worth more than all the others put together.
He assembled his fellow survivors and read Psalm 107, the Traveler’s Psalm. Soon, using the same Bible, he began his first class with a little group of five boys under a banyan tree.
Within a week the class had grown to 300, and it soon became a school that evangelized and educated the higher classes in India, producing a qualified generation of leaders for the nation’s young church.
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Suggested Bible Readings
Proverbs 3: 1-26
Proverbs 4: 10-27
Proverbs 8: 18-21
Proverbs 9: 10-12
These are Scriptures for Wisdom and Well-Being
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My Favorite Blog Posts
Let God Change your Life 2° at a Time
I copied this email awhile back and recently found it. There is a wonderful application here for the Christian.
The story goes like this:
I heard a guy tell a story that he was on a plane flight that got delayed. He said that he was trying to finish some work on his laptop until the battery died, and the man next to him was doing the same. Then with nothing better to do, they started talking.
The man told him that he was a flight engineer for NASA. After that the other guy started asking a lot of questions, and asked him if he was on the team of Apollo 13. The man told him that he was. He asked if the astronauts actually said “Houston, we have a problem.” The man told him that was correct.
He told him that the real scenario was just as dramatic as the movie portrayed it, and in many ways more so because of the real human lives at stake.
The guy told him that the astronauts only had enough fuel left for one blast-off that would get them into orbit. After that their fuel would run out and they would not be able to steer the space craft at all.
Houston’s calculations had to be exact because of this. He said that they had to really make sure that everything would work perfectly as much as they possibly could.
The guy asked the flight engineer why it was so important that everything should be exact. He said “Why couldn’t it just be off 1 or 2 degrees, because it doesn’t seem like that would make much of a difference?” The flight engineer was totally taken aback at this and pulled out his calculator. He showed him all the calculations, and showed him that if they had been 2 degrees off with their calculations, the astronauts would have missed the earth by more than 11,000 miles.
The flight engineer told him that 2 degrees can make a huge difference over a lot of miles.
Christians are bombarded daily with all kinds of things that keep us way too busy, and ultimately keep us from doing the things that God desires. How many times have we gotten off by just a small amount and it was some time later before we realized it. Then we had to make a hard choice that was necessary to get back on track. I am not talking about doing something terrible, but just doing things that you haven’t prayed about direction for. I know that I have wasted a lot of time doing things that I didn’t pray about first. I just did them because I thought they were good.
You should know that I am writing this from the perspective of one who became a Christian at a young age and grew up in church, but just never knew what it was to have that truly personal relationship with God. I knew all about Him, but I didn’t know His Character.
It’s so easy to get caught up in doing good things. Satan wants you to spend your life doing things that don’t really matter where eternity is concerned.
Many people think that if they let God lead them, they will have to dramatically stop everything they are doing and totally make a change instantly. God starts working in your life wherever you will let Him, and gradually changes your thoughts, actions, and beliefs. Then when you look back on your life after a year or so, you can see how you have changed for the better. He always has your best in mind, where many times we as humans don’t really know what is best for us because we can’t see the future.
God has a perfect plan for the life of the Christian, and He always wants to steer you in the right direction. The Holy Spirit is here to lead you so that you don’t get off even one degree. You alone can make the choice as to the direction you will take.
I have found that when I follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, I am always amazed at how things work out. I don’t get frustrated because I know that I am doing what God desires. I want to live each day with the Holy Spirit leading me in every area of my life.
Just imagine what an impact each Christian could make on a lost world if we each relied totally on God to lead us each day.
We would always be doing the right thing – at the right time – in the right place. God would be able to use us at work, home, play, church, wherever we are at the time.
Determine right now in your heart that this is the way you want to live each day in the future. Make sure that you have not gotten 2 degrees off by this time next year in your walk with God.
If you are reading this and you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, you can do so right now. All you have to do is admit that you are a sinner, ask Him to come into your heart, forgive you of your sin, and change your life. He will do that and then the Holy Spirit will be available to lead you in the right direction and give you what you need to grow in Christ.
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A Funny “First Kiss” Story
In the last few days I have run across several funny stories and some good, clean jokes. It is a nice feeling to have a good laugh where you have to wipe your eyes. This one is not as funny as the guy having to put up with the little soaps in the hotel room, but it still makes me laugh.
I know that many times in the heat of spiritual battle, I forget to take some time out to have a little fun. I have to remind myself to lighten up! God wants each of His children to be well balanced and enjoy life.
This is another Mikey’s Funnies story.
THAT FIRST KISS
At the end of their first date, a young man takes his favorite girl home. Emboldened by the night, he decides to try for that important first kiss. With an air of confidence, he leans with his hand against the wall, and smiling, he says to her, “Darling, how ’bout a goodnight kiss?”
Horrified, she replies, “Are you mad? My parents will see us!”
“Oh come on! Who’s gonna see us at this hour?”
“No, please. Can you imagine if we get caught?”
“Oh come on, there’s nobody around, they’re all sleeping!”
“No way. It’s just too risky!”
“Oh please, please, I like you so much!”
“No, no, and no. I like you too, but I just can’t!”
“Oh yes you can. Please?”
“No, no. I just can’t.”
“Please?…”
Out of the blue, the porch light goes on, and the girl’s sister shows up in her pajamas, hair disheveled. In a sleepy voice the sister says: “Dad says to go ahead and give him a kiss. Or I can do it. Or if need be, he’ll come down himself and do it. But for crying out loud tell him to take his hand off the intercom button!”
To check out my blog go to Who God Is Blog
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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
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Video of the Month
This greatly moves me every time I watch it. What a great word picture of what Jesus does for us.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GwdTg9l_bI&hl=en&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1]
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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.
Contact me at cathy (at) handbook-victorious-christian-living.com (Please put this in the correct email format. I had to do this because of spam bots that collect email addresses.)
In Christ,
