Being transformed (Mike Cleveland)

The first thing I do in the morning is to present my body to the Lord as a living sacrifice. Next, I sit down with my Bible and I read it. As I meditate over the truths, looking for Christ and for specific ways I may implement what Iam studying, I undergo a change in my thinking.
I dwell on Jesus Christ and His perfect sacrifice on the cross. I then plan out the day from a spiritual perspective. What will I do to avoid temptation completely? What will I do if I have a "surprise attack?" How will I handle each situation and circumstance?
This "renewing my mind" is really just "thinking biblically"—andthinking biblically leads to acting biblically.

Take my advice this day. Seek an increase of faith. Seek to obtain a simple childlike confidence in God's promises. Lay aside your doubts. Lean more entirely on the Lord's arm. Begin with implicit trusting. Cast aside your faithless backwardness to take the Lord at his word. Come and roll yourself, your soul, and your sins upon your gracious Savior.
                                                                                                                                               J.C Ryle

LORD MOST HIGH
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
verse
From the ends of the earth
(echo)
From the depths of the sea
(echo)
From the heights of the heavens
(echo)
Your name be praised
From the hearts of the weak
(echo)
From the shouts of the strong
(echo)
From the lips of all people
(echo)
This song we raise, Lord
chorus
Throughout the endless ages
You will be crowned with praises, Lord Most High
Exalted in every nation
Sovereign of all creation
Lord Most High, Be magnified!

The pursuit of wealth and honour - J.C. Ryle

Let me say a few parting words about the great fight of the soul:

It may be your are straining every nerve to obtain money, or place or power, or pleasure. If that be your case, take care. Your sowing will lead to a crop of bitter disappointment. Unless you mind what you are about, your latter end will be to lie down in sorrow.

Thousands have trodden the path you are pursuing and have awoke too late to find it end in misery and eternal ruin. They have fought hard for wealth, and honour, and office, and promotion, and turned their backs on God, and Christ and the world to come. And what has their end been? Often, far too often, they have found out that their whole life has been a grand mistake.

For your own happiness' sake, resolve this day to join the Lord's side. Shake off your past carelessness and unbelief. Come out from the ways of a thoughtless, unreasonable world. Take up the cross, and become a good soldier of Christ. Fight the good fight of faith, that you may be happy as well as safe.

Don't calculate without God - Oswald Chambers

"Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass." Psalm 37:5

Don't calculate without God.
God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we have calculated on without taking Him into account. We get into circumstances which were not chosen by God, and suddenly we find we have been calculating without God; He has not entered in as a living factor. The one thing that keeps us from the possibility of worrying is bringing God in as the greatest factor in all our calculations.
In our religion it is customary to put God first, but we are apt to think it is an impertinence to put Him first in the practical issues of our lives. If we imagine we have to put on our Sunday moods before we come near to God, we will never come near Him. We must come as we are.

Don't calculate with the evil in view.
Does God really mean us to take no account of the evil? "Love . . . taketh no account of the evil." Love is not ignorant of the existence of the evil, but it does not take it in as a calculating factor. Apart from God, we do reckon with evil; we calculate with it in view and work all our reasonings from that standpoint.

Don't calculate with the rainy day in view.
You cannot lay up for a rainy day if you are trusting Jesus Christ. Jesus said - "Let not your heart be troubled." God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command - "Let not . . ." Haul yourself up a hundred and one times a day in order to do it, until you get into the habit of putting God first and calculating with Him in view.

Blessed Jesus!

Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us (click to listen)

Savior, like a shepherd lead us, much we need Thy tender care;
In Thy pleasant pastures feed us, for our use Thy folds prepare.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus! Thou hast bought us, Thine we are.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus! Thou hast bought us, Thine we are.

We are Thine, do Thou befriend us,
be the guardian of our way;

Keep Thy flock, from sin defend us,
seek us when we go astray.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus!
Hear, O hear us when we pray.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus!
Hear, O hear us when we pray.

Thou hast promised to receive us,
poor and sinful though we be;
Thou hast mercy to relieve us,
grace to cleanse and power to free.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus!
Early let us turn to Thee.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus!
Early let us turn to Thee.

Early let us seek Thy favor, early let us do Thy will;
Blessed Lord and only Savior, with Thy love our bosoms fill.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus! Thou hast loved us, love us still.
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus! Thou hast loved us, love us still

"This life, therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not finished, but is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified."

Martin Luther

Overeating is a SIN

One of the problems among Christians today is that very few are willing to say that the act of overeating is sin. It is socially acceptable to overeat and so most would rather say that overeating is a "weakness," or a dietary problem that may be corrected by changing foods, a glandular problem, or that we simply "have a big appetite"...etc

Overeating is a sin for the following reasons:

•Whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we are to do to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). God is not glorified when we evidence a lack of self control in our eating habits.

•My body is the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:17, 6:19). The temple of God is not to be destroyed or defiled. Overeating or other sinful eating habits defiles the temple and if continued in can lead to its early destruction.

•Sinning leads to slavery (John 8:34). Overeating, like any sin, becomes addictive and can be extremely hard to overcome.
•Jesus told us to take up our cross daily (Luke 9:23) and Paul told us to crucify the desires of the flesh (Romans 8:13, Colossians 3:5). To overeat is to gratify the cravings of the flesh, rather than to crucify them. This is sin. This is not to say that it's a sin to eat when hungry. The sin of gluttony is the habit of overeating. Food is not evil, and eating is not a sin.
•There are many passages of Scripture which speak of the sin of gluttony; the Bible instructs us to avoid the path of the glutton (Proverbs 23:20-21) and to "put a knife to our throat" if we are given to gluttony (Proverbs 23:2). (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines gluttony as "excess eating.")

"My Jesus knows..."

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

 Hebrews 4:14-16

Calm-still Christianity?

The saddest symptom about so many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once on twice a week. But the great spiritual warfare - its watching and struggling, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests - of all this they appear to know nothing at all.

The worst chains are those which are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner. We may take comfort about our souls if we know anything of inward fight and conflict. It is the invariable companion of genuine Christian holiness.

Do we feel anything of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot do the things we could? (Gal. 5:17) Are you conscious of two principles within us, contending for the mastery?

Do we feel anything of war in our inward man? Well, let us thank God for it! It is a good sign. It is strongly probable evidence of the great work of sanctification. All true saints are soldiers. Anything is better than apathy, stagnation, deadness and indifference.
The very fact that Satan assaults us should fill our minds with hope. The child of God may be known by his inward warfare, as well as by his inward peace.

J.C Ryle

Soldiers of Christ, Arise - Charles Wesley, 1749

Soldiers of Christ, Arise   (click to listen)

    Charles Wesley, 1749

  

Soldiers of Christ, arise,

And put your armor on,

Strong in the strength

Which God supplies

Through his eternal Son.

Strong in the Lord of Hosts,

And in his mighty pow’r,

Who in the strength of Jesus trusts

Is more than conqueror.

Stand then in his great might,

With all his strength endued;

But take, to arm you for the fight,

The panoply of God.

Leave no unguarded place,

No weakness of the soul;

Take ev’ry virtue, ev’ry grace,

And fortify the whole.

To keep your armor bright,

Attend with constant care;

Still walking in your Captain’s sight,

And watching unto prayer.

From strength to strength go on;

Wrestle and fight and pray;

Tread all the pow’rs of darkness down,

And win the well-fought day.

The Fight - J.C Ryle

The principal fight of the Christian is with the world, the flesh and the Devil. These are never-dying foes. These are three enemies against whom he must wage war. With a corrupt heart, a busy devil, and an ensnaring world, he must either fight or be lost.

He must fight the flesh. Even after conversion he carries within him a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water. That heart will never be free from imperfection in this world, and it is a miserable delusion to expect it. There is need of a daily struggle and a daily wrestling in prayer. "I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity" "Mortify your members which are upon the earth"

He must fight the world: The subtle influence of that mighty enemy must be daily resisted, and without a daily battle can never be overcome.

The love of world's good things - the fear of the world's laughter or blame - the secret desire to keep in with the world - the secret wish to do as others in the world do. "The friendship of the world is enmity with God"

"Be not conformed to this world."

He must fight the devil. That old enemy of mankind is not dead. Never slumbering, and never sleeping, he is always "going about as a lion seeking whom he may devour". An unseen enemy, he's always near us, about our path and about our bed, and spying out all our ways. "A murderer and "a liar" from the beginning, he labours night and day to cast us down to hell. Sometimes by leading us into superstition, sometimes, by suggesting infidelity, sometimes by one kind of tactics and sometimes by another, he is always carrying on a campaign against our souls. This mighty adversary must be daily resisted if we wish to be saved. The strong man armed will never be kept out of our hearts without a daily battle.

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land."

Repentance

"Now, therefore," says the LORD, "Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm." — Joel 2:12-13

This invitation precedes the blessings that make up the rest of Joel 2. From these verses, we learn that people who repent will be "satisfied" (verse 19), "refreshed" (verses 21-24), "restored" (verse 25), and "unashamed" (verse 27)

Come, and let us return to the LORD; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up.

After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight.

Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, Like the latter and former rain to the earth. — Hosea 6:1-3

What holiness means - J.C Ryle

Holiness is the habit of being one mind with God - hating what he hates, loving what he loves.

A holy man will endeavor to shun every known sin, and keep every known commandment.

He will have a greater fear of displeasing him than of displeasing the world, and a love to all his ways.

A holy man will strive to be like our Jesus Christ. It will be his aim to bear with and forgive others, even as Christ forgave us.

Much time would be saved, and much sin prevented, if men would often askthemselves the question: What would Christ have said and done, if he were in my place?

Ryle's Quote

‎"Let us believe in Christ, serve Christ, follow Christ, and love Christ. So whenever Christ may return, we shall be ready to meet Him."

 J.C. Ryle

Why God Closes Doors

Jeremiah 10:23-24
A blockaded opportunity is a useful teaching tool. God's ultimate objective is to mold us into the image of His Son, and toward that end, He at times prevents us from doing or having something we desire.

• Closed doors prevent mistakes. Just because a path is clear does not mean it is the one God intends for us to follow. Sometimes we won't have the information we need to make a wise decision, so He bars the way either spiritually or physically. The Holy Spirit can see the whole road map for our lives, which is why we are to follow His guidance.

• Closed doors redirect our walk.
Rest assured, God never leaves a willing servant with nothing to do. The alternate opportunity He has in mind will yield bigger fruit, more satisfaction, and greater glory for Him.

• Closed doors test faith and build perseverance. Waiting for the Lord to speak or act is hard, particularly when our desire has been denied. But we'll learn wisdom, patience, and trust by pausing prayerfully until He reveals His will.

• Closed doors buy us time. We are not always as prepared as we'd like to think. God may temporarily hold shut an opportunity for service until a believer is properly equipped for kingdom work.

In spite of the repeated use of "closed door" in this devotion, the real message is that God opens doors. He has created a perfect pathway for us to follow. Keep your feet on it, and you will walk over thresholds leading to service, satisfaction, and glory for your Lord.

LIGHT OF THE WORLD

This song bellow was sang at calvary last Sunday and I belive its message really fits our congregation's heart, when we gather to worship the only source of salvation, real hope, plesure and satisfaction: The Lord our God.

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Light of the World, You stepped down Into darkness,
Opened my eyes, let me see.
Beauty that made this heart adore You.
Hope of a life spent with You.


So here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down.
Here I am to say that You're my God.
You're altogether lovely altogether worthy,
Altogether wonderful to me.

King of all days, Oh, so highly exalted,
Glorious in heaven above.
Humbly You came to the earth You created.
All for love's sake became poor.

And I'll never know how much it cost,
To see my sin upon the cross.

"Men are in a restless pursuit after satisfaction in earthly things. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become very perplexed and disappointed. But they will continue their fruitless search. Though wearied, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there is no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward. They have no forethought for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. They turn to another and another of earth's broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet."

Charles Spurgeon