Victorious Christian Living Newsletter
Welcome to the November 2008 Edition
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This issue includes:
3 of My Featured Teaching Articles
Quotes for Inspiration
A Bible Quiz Question
Just for Laughs
Interesting Bible Facts
A Powerful Story
Favorite Articles from My Blog
Links to My Other Sites
Video of the Month
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Anger: Has It Become Your Master?
Any person capable of angering you becomes your master. He can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. -Epictetus-
When you are really angry about something another person has done, it totally consumes you. Your adrenaline skyrockets and your mind races a million miles an hour trying to think of some way to make them pay.
The natural fleshly response is to hurt them the way they have hurt you. What you don’t realize is that all the time spent thinking of ways to get revenge wreaks much more havoc in your own life than in the life of the other person, and you can never get that valuable time back.
When you are consumed with anger, the important things that really need doing get swept aside. You lose your ability to think in a rational manner and many times do things that you regret when you have had time to cool down.
The longer you let anger consume you the harder it is to let go of the pride that comes with it. You feel justified in keeping it because the other person has truly wronged you and they should make it right, but may refuse to do so.
Anger slowly erodes the stable foundation of your life. It starts to cloud your thinking about everyday situations that don’t have anything to do with what you are angry about. This world can be very cruel, and people don’t always care what they say or who they hurt. Some of them are only concerned with getting their way no matter who they have to steamroll over to do it.
If you happen to get in the way, then you are a casualty.
You always have a choice as to whether you let anger control your life. It may seem easier in the moment of hurt to wallow in it for awhile than it does to take control of your thinking and tell yourself that you won’t be consumed or controlled by it.
Give the whole thing to God and ask Him to help you forgive the other person. He is a master at forgiveness because He practices it probably millions of times every day.
Psalms 103: 10-12
He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
If you are a Child of God, and you ask His forgiveness, He has the ability to instantly forgive you and forget what you have done. When you travel east, you can continue in that direction indefinitely. You will never go west until you purposely change directions; but if you go north, you WILL eventually have to go south.
God forgives you totally, and he wants you to do the same for others. He wants you to realize that what you are doing is the best thing for your future. If you hold on to the anger, it can eventually destroy you.
Ask God to help you forgive the other person when you can’t do it by yourself. He can supernaturally work in your life to give you peace and joy instead of feeling hate or bitterness. That does not mean that the other person won’t suffer any consequences, because each of us will always reap what we have sown at some point in the future.
Forgiveness is just making the choice to let it go and let God handle the consequences. Don’t let anger become master of your life and rob you of valuable time that could be spent doing much better things.
By Cathy Deaton
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Phrases That Can Make Your Dream Die!
The most damaging phrase in our language is: It’s always been done that way.
-Grace Hopper-
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow.
-Charles Brower-
These two quotes probably make each one of us think of a dream we once had where we really thought we could make a difference in some area. Then we told others, and they either didn’t think we could do it or told us it wouldn’t work because it had never been done that way.
Many times we just listened to them and let the dream die; then tried to convince our self that it would never have worked anyway. Years later we then still regretted the fact that we let others have the power to convince us our dream would never work.
God has given you unique gifts and talents that He wants you to use for His work on earth. There is no other person that has the exact personality as you, and He has a perfect plan for your life.
God has the power to see how He can use you in the whole scheme of things. All you can see is the small area of world around you. Your vision is also limited to what your mind can comprehend, and most of the time that is only what you have seen before.
God, the Creator, knows how everything works together, and He can see the whole picture. Many times what He says can look like it does not make sense because you cannot see what the other person is doing that fits in perfectly with what you are doing.
If you have a dream, pray about it first and make sure it is something that God wants you to do. Once you are sure about that, ask Him to give you a dynamic faith to carry out the idea or dream.
He will never lie to you and the more you read and study his Word and have personal time with Him, the more you will know that you can trust Him with your life. When he tells you to do something, you can have confidence to proceed knowing that He is walking ahead of you to pave the way.
When you do things in this way, you are not affected as much by others who try to discourage or demean your idea or dream. You will have to acquire patience if you follow God, but in the end you can be sure that He will bring everything to pass according to what He has promised.
You really can trust Him to always have your best interest at heart when you follow His plans. He wants to bless His Children just like you have the desire to bless your own earthly children.
Try it and see what great things He can accomplish through you!
By Cathy Deaton
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Do you use Supernatural Power for Change?
It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are indeed part of the problem.
-Anonymous-
Many times we have strong feelings about things that need change, but we don’t feel passionate enough to actually be used as an instrument for that change.
The problem with using your own power for positive change is the fact that you only have so much power that you can muster up on your own. It may be enough to solve small problems, but you run short when it comes to something big that might take awhile to work on.
God can give you all the power you need to accomplish whatever He desires. He will bring people, circumstances, and perfect timing together in order to get His Will accomplished. You will always be amazed at the way everything falls into place in such a marvelous way.
I can usually tell that change is on the horizon when all of a sudden, I get bored or miserable with something I may have done for awhile and have been perfectly happy doing; or I might get upset and emotional over something that has never bothered me before. God just starts to shake me up in the way I think. We can all remember a time when we have changed our way of thinking about a particular thing and been shocked because we could not imagine that our view could have changed so quickly.
It is one thing to be bored, miserable, or upset about a thing; it is entirely another to do something about it. Don’t get ahead of God – wait until He tells you what you need to do and walk in obedience. God uses ordinary people all the time to accomplish great things for His Kingdom.
Many times I have been very upset about something and vented about it for quite some time; then I got over it and felt that my venting was enough without ever doing anything about it. You cannot change everything that makes you upset, but you can choose to be open to the Will of God in the matter. Sometimes you will need to confront the issue, and sometimes you should let it go.
You do not have to be the leader of every instrument for change. God may have already chosen another to lead, and He wants you to be a dedicated follower. Either way, He can use you to accomplish His work.
When you let the supernatural power of God work through you, He can accomplish much more than you could ever think about using human power alone. Let yourself be a vessel through which He can accomplish great things!
By Cathy Deaton
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Quotes for Inspiration
A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.
Phillips Brooks
Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
Mahatma Gandhi
Answers to prayer often come in unexpected ways. We pray, for instance, for a certain virtue; but God seldom delivers Christian virtues all wrapped in a package and ready for use.
Rather he puts us in situations where by his help we can develop those virtues. Henry Ward Beecher told of a woman who prayed for patience and God sent her a poor cook.
The best answers to prayer may be the vision and strength to meet a circumstance or to assume a responsibility.
C R Findley
A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
Anonymous
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good intentions.
Margaret Thatcher
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A Bible Quiz Question
Paul was shipwrecked and then bitten by a snake on which Mediterranean island?
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.
The answer to the 10-2008 newsletter quiz question is 52 days found in Nehemiah 6: 15-16
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Just for Laughs
The Answer
When the preacher’s car broke down on a country road, he walked to a nearby roadhouse to use the phone. After calling for a tow truck, he spotted his old friend, Frank, drunk and shabbily dressed at the bar. “What happened to you, Frank?” asked the good reverend. “You used to be rich.”
Frank told a sad tale of bad investments that had led to his downfall. “Go home,” the preacher said. “Open your Bible at random, stick your finger on the page and there will be God’s answer.”
Sometime later, the preacher bumped into Frank, who was wearing a Gucci suit, sporting a Rolex watch and had just stepped out of a Mercedes. “Frank,” said the preacher, “I am glad to see things really turned around for you.”
“Yes, preacher, and I owe it all to you,” said Frank. “I opened my Bible, put my finger down on the page and there was the answer – Chapter 11.”
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Interesting Bible Facts
LOAN – The Law of Moses required the rich to lend to the poor without interest, only taking security against loss. Foreigners were not included in this rule. The practice of usury was always discreditable among the Hebrews, and Nehemiah restrained its exercise. The money changers of the Temple were useful to the worshipers who came from a distance, and especially from foreign countries. They changed money to the only lawful coin, the half-shekel, because annual temple dues were required from each person. Any foreign currency in the actual Temple itself was illegal and a desecration of the holy place.
LOCK – The common wooden lock of the East is a clumsy wooden bolt kept in place by a few loose pins which may be lifted by a key with pegs fitted to match. The keys are sometimes very large, being two feet or more long. They are a symbol of authority.
HAIR – The Egyptians were very uniform in their habits of dressing the hair. Herodotus says that they let their hair and beards grow only in mourning. The priests, who were to be clean to the highest possible degree, had to shave their whole bodies every third day. Other men shaved the head only or the beard also.
The women wore their hair natural, but braided, and dressed with strings of silk with ornaments. The Assyrian men wore the hair combed and curled, falling quite low about the neck; wearing the whiskers curled also.
Among the Greeks and Romans, the fashion of wearing the hair passed through many changes. The Hebrews cut the men’s hair quite short, almost to the ears, and to keep the beard a proper length by trimming it, but not to shave either head or beard. The Nazarite was an exception, who let both hair and beard grow uncut or uncombed.
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A Powerful Story
Awakened to Pray
His nightmares began each day when he awoke.
James Stegalls was nineteen. He was in Vietnam. Though he carried a small Gideon New Testament in his shirt pocket, he couldn’t bring himself to read it. His buddies were cut down around him, terror was building within him, and God seemed far away. His twentieth birthday passed, then his twenty-first. At last, he felt he couldn’t go on.
On February 26, 1968, he prayed for it all to end, and his heart told him he would die before dusk. Sure enough, his base came under attack that day and Jim heard a rocket coming straight toward him. Three seconds to live, he told himself, then two, then…
A friend shoved him into a grease pit, and he waited for the rocket to explode, but there was only a surreal silence. The fuse malfunctioned.
For five hours James knelt in that pit, and finally his quivering hand reached into his shirt pocket and took out his Testament. Beginning with Matthew, he continued through the first 18 Chapters. “When I read Matthew 18: 19-20,” he said, “I somehow knew things would be all right.”
Long after Jim returned home, as he visited his wife’s grandmother, Mrs. Harris, she told him a night years before when she had awakened in terror. Knowing Jim was in Vietnam, she had sensed he was in trouble. She began praying for God to spare his life. Unable to kneel because of arthritis, she lay prone on the floor, praying and reading her Bible all night.
Just before dawn she read Matthew 18: 19-20: If two of you agree down here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together because they are min, I am there among them.
She immediately called her Sunday school teacher, who got out of bed and went to Mrs. Harris’ house where together they claimed the Lord’s promise as they prayed for Jim until reassured by God’s peace.
Having told Jim the story, Mrs. Harris opened her Bible tos how him where she had marked the passage.
In the margin were the words: Jim, February 26, 1968.
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My Favorite Blog Posts
Do You Live in Freedom?
Do you really live in freedom?
There are some people who are able to break away from the “norm” and do things that others only dream of doing. Most of us want to find a zone that is very comfortable, though, and stay there. We don’t want to stand out from the crowd too much because people will think we are weird or “losing it.”
I have learned from experience that if you truly give God control of your life, the words “comfort zone” will not be a part of your vocabulary; but you won’t lead a dull and boring life either. You will be amazed at the things God can accomplish through you when you are obedient.
God works in a much different way than man can imagine. He can see the whole picture and knows where you will be 20 years down the road. He wants you to get to the place that you can trust Him to bring about the very best for every situation.
Don’t just stay in your “comfort zone” because it is the easiest thing to do; let God stretch, grow, and change you to be a person He can use for His Glory and Honor. NOW THAT IS LIVING IN FREEDOM!
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Don’t Borrow Trouble from Tomorrow!
This is a saying that I believe all of us can identify with. Matthew 6: 34 says “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
There will be plenty of things to come along today to occupy your time without borrowing from tomorrow. It is very easy to let the picture above become a reality; then things start to crowd in and create chaos in your everyday life. Don’t allow yourself to worry about what will happen in the future.
It might not be an easy thing to do, but you always have a choice as to how you will spend the gift of the present day God has given you. Use the time wisely to think on good things, have an attitude of thanksgiving, and seek to get closer to Him each day.
Vs 33 says “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Make the choice to stand on this verse and its awesome promise. Just take a step forward each day and start to see the awesome ways God will work in your life. Let the Holy Spirit guide you in everything you do.
This wonderful quote puts it all in perspective. The source is Unknown
Mile by mile, it’s a trial
Yard by yard, it’s hard
But inch by inch it’s a cinch.
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
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Video of the Month
I Know My Redeemer Lives!
What a powerful message in these words. This is a truly anointed song sung by Nicole C Mullen.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATBLXyJxyTI&feature=related]
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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,
