THE STARFISH STORY

The Starfish Storyadapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley (1907 - 1977)

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer.

He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all.

The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die.

"Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!

"At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

We can all make a difference. Look around and see who we can help today!

REAL FAITH - By George Mueller

(Founder of the Orphanages at Bristol, England)
TEXT: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:1).
FIRST: WHAT IS FAITH? In the simplest manner in which I am able to express it, I answer: Faith is the assurance that the thing which God has said in His Word is true, and that God will act according to what He has said in His Word. This assurance, this reliance on God’s Word, this confidence is FAITH.
NO IMPRESSIONS ARE TO BE TAKEN IN CONNECTION WITH FAITH. Impressions have neither one thing nor the other to do with faith. Faith has to do with the Word of God. It is not impressions, strong or weak, which will make any difference. We have to do with the written Word and not ourselves or our impressions.
PROBABILITIES ARE NOT TO BE TAIKEN INTO ACCOUNT. Many people are willing to believe regarding those things that seem probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities. The province of FAITH begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail. A great many of God’s children are cast down and lament their want of Faith. They write to me and say that they have no impressions, no feeling, they see no probability that the thing they wish will come to pass. APPEARANCES ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT. The question is – whether God has spoken it in His Word.
And now, beloved Christian friends, you are in great need to ask yourselves whether you are in the habit of thus confiding, in your inmost soul, in what God has said, and whether you are in earnest in seeking to find whether the thing you want is in accordance with what He has said in His Word.
SECOND: HOW FAITH MAY BE INCREASED. God delights to increase the Faith of His children. Our Faith which is feeble at first, is developed and strengthened more and more by us. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means. I say – and say it deliberately – trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats, are the very food of Faith. I get letters from so many of God’s dear children who say: “Dear Brother Mueller, I’m writing this because I am so weak in faith.” Just so surely as we ask to have our Faith strengthened, we must feel a willingness to take from God’s hand the means for strengthening it. We must allow Him to educate us through trials and bereavements and troubles. It is through trials that Faith is exercised and developed more and more. God affectionately permits difficulties, that He may develop unceasingly that which He is willing to do for us, and to this end we should not shrink, but if He gives us sorrow and hindrances and losses and afflictions, we should take them out of His hands as evidences of His love and care for us in developing more and more that Faith which He is seeking to strengthen in us.
The Church of God is not aroused to see God as the beautiful and lovable One He is, and hence the littleness of blessedness. Oh, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, seek to learn for yourselves, for I cannot tell you the blessedness! In the darkest moments I am able to confide in Him, for I know what a beautiful and kind and lovable Being He is, and, if it be the will of God to put us in the furnace, let Him do it, that so we may acquaint ourselves with Him as He will reveal Himself, and that we may know Him better. We come then to the conclusion that God is a lovable Being, and we are satisfied with Him, and say: “It is my Father, let Him do as He pleases.”
When I first began to allow God to deal with me, relying on Him, taking Him at His Word, and set out fifty years ago simply relying on Him for myself, family, taxes, travelling expenses and every other need, I rested on the simple promises I found in the sixth chapter of Matthew. Read Matthew 6:25-34 carefully. I believed the Word, I rested on it and practiced it. I took God at His word. A stranger, a foreigner in England, I knew seven languages and might have used them perhaps as a means of remunerative employment but I had consecrated myself to labor for the Lord, I put my reliance in the God who has promised, and He has acted according to His Word. I’ve lacked nothing – nothing. I have had my trials, my difficulties, and my purse empty, but my receipts have aggregated thousands of dollars, while the work has gone on these 51 years. Then, with regard to my pastoral work; for the past 51 years I have had great difficulties, great trials and perplexities. There will always be difficulties, always trials. But God has sustained me under them and delivered nw out ofthem, and the work has gone on. Now, this is not, as some have said, because I am a man of great mental power, or endowed with energy and perseverance – these are not the reasons. It is because I have confided in God; because I have sought God, and He has cared for the Institution, which, under His direction, has 100 schools, with masters and mistresses and other departments which I have told you before.
I do not carry the burden. And now in my 67th year, I have physical strength and mental vigor for as much work as when I was a young man in the university, studying and preparing Latin orations. I am just as vigorous as at that time. How comes this? Because in the last half century of labor I’ve been able, with the simplicity of a child, to rely upon God. I have had my trials, but I have laid hold upon God, and so it has come to pass that I have been sustained. It is not only permission, but positive command that He gives, to cast the burdens upon Him. Oh, let us do it! My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee.” Day by day I do it. This morning sixty matters in connection with the church of which I am pastor, I brought before the Lord, and thus it is, day by day I do it, and year by year; ten years, thirty years, forty years.
Do not, however, expect to obtain full Faith at once. All such things as jumping into full exercise of Faith in such things I discountenance. I do not believe in it. I do not believe in it. I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT, AND I WISH YOU PLAINLY TO UNDERSTAND I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT. All such things go on in a natural way. The little I did obtain, I did not obtain all at once. All this I say particularly, because letters come to me full of questions from those who seek to have their Faith strengthened. Begin over again, staying your soul on the Word of God, and you will have an increase of your Faith as you exercise it.
One thing more. Some say, “Oh, I shall never have the gift of Faith Mr. Mueller has got.” This is a mistake – it is the greatest error – there is not a particle of truth in it. My Faith is the same kind of Faith that all of God’s children have had. It is the same kind that Simon Peter had, and all Christians may obtain the like Faith. My Faith is their Faith, though there may be more of it because my Faith has been a little more developed by exercise then theirs; but their Faith is precisely the Faith I exercise, only, with regard to degree, mine may be more strongly exercised.
Now, my beloved brothers and sisters, begin in a little way.
At first I was able to trust the Lord for ten dollars, then for a hundred dollars, then for a thousand dollars, and now, with the greatest ease, I could trust Him for a million dollars, if there was occasion. But first, I should quietly, carefully, deliberately examine and see whether what I was trusting for, was something in accordance with His promises in His written Word.
“As laborers together with Him” (2 Corinthians 6:1).

FOOD FOR THE INNER MAN: By George Mueller (1805-1898)

  

 

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now…more than forty years have since passed away.
The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, to have MY SOUL HAPPY IN THE LORD. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by dy, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart may be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessings out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.
When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.
The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind of the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.
I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowhship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.
It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this. In no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is a plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.
As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.
I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!

 

MOments and MOnuments

The Pastor's Soul, Role, and Home.

The Pastor's Soul, Role, and Home.

Mantle of Love

WINNING WORD: GRACE AWAKENING

WINNING WORD: GRACE AWAKENING: "A new movement is on the horizon.It is a movement of freedom, a joyful release from the things that have bound us for far too long. More and..."

GRACE AWAKENING

A new movement is on the horizon.

It is a movement of freedom, a joyful release from the things that have bound us for far too long. More and more Christians are realizing that the man-made restrictions and legalistic regulations under which they have been living have not come from the God of grace, but have been enforced by people who do not want others to be free. It is not an overstatement to describe this movement as an awakening that is beginning to sweep across the country. This awakening to freedom is long overdue. It fits the times in which we are living.

 Free people find delight in others freedom. Only the politically enslaved resist it. The same is true spiritually. It is about time we give people the permission to be free, absolutely free in Christ.

 Why? Because so few are!

Bound and shackled by legalists’ list of do’s and don’ts, intimidated and immobilized by others demands and expectation, far too many in God’s family merely exist in the tight radius of bondage, dictated by those who have appointed themselves our judge and jury. Long enough have we been asleep while all around us the grace killers do their sinister nighttime work. No longer! It is time to awaken. The dawn is bright with grace.

So many people are being turned off by a twisted concept of the Christian life. Instead of offering a winsome and contagious, sensible and achievable invitation of hope and cheer through the sheer power of Christ, more people than ever are projecting a grim-faced caricature of religion on demand. I find it tragic that religious kill-joys have almost succeeded in taking the freedom and fun out of faith. People have to know that there is more to the Christian life than deep frowns, pointing fingers, and unrealistic expectation. Harassment has had the floor long enough. Let grace awaken!

    Author: Chuck Swindoll

Thought Of The Day: By the grace of God, you have a special calling and destiny in Christ!

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YES, THE NEW PASSWORD FOR THE NEW YOU

  The promises of God does not wither like the grass neither does it fade in beauty like a flower. It is forever settled. Our perspective on God has to be this "If God said it, I believe it, and that settles it all. I also agree with the song writer "Forever oh Lord thy word is settled in heaven".
We are living in a period of time that everything we have believed in and relied upon, has probably failed us. Talk about the financial experts and their false hope for the masses whose heart has failed them, moral failures from the pew to the pulpit, World leaders and their failure to fulfill their political agenda has left so many people in disbelief and despair. Innovative ideas and great potentials has all found themselves in the museum of passitivity.
Things has fallen apart in all spheres of life; Churches are being shut down, Spiritual leaders has been incarcerated, broken homes,broken marriages, lack of vaccines, premature death is on the ascendancy in many parts of Africa due to greed, mismanagement,  and our confidence in faulty foundations. The greatest of all, the neglect of God has brought man to an overwhelming emptyness. But there is hope for the living in Christ.

With belly full of despair and the odd that has stack itself against you, it's time to switch gears and redirect your focus on God and patiently wait and feed on His goodness, love and meditate on His power to restore. Maybe you've seen and experience enough of the weight of pain and anguish and it seems like, there is no way out. You might be thinking of committing suicide or liquor to ease your pain or probably as a last resort a for this unpretty situation. I dare you to trust in His unfailing love of God and see Him turn things around. His hands are ready to receive you.

You might be asking, Pastor McDaniels What is the Solution? The solution is in God. He holds the keys to your future, you just have to believe with a childlike faith in Elohim. Remember, there is hope for the future if you so don't throw in the towel and if you don't quit too soon. Don't rush, don't lose your cool, the grace of God is sufficient in your weakness and calamities. One day at a time honey. I bet you, you will be smiling in no time. Let's get a hold of God's eternal promise through the prophet Isaiah;

Isaiah 41:10 (Amplified Bible)
Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you; yes, I will hold you up and retain you with My [victorious] right hand of rightness and justice.

I hear the Lord say to somebody YES I WILL HELP YOU, that's right, you read correctly "GOD, HE WILL HELP YOU" and you may ask How? And the Lord is saying to you "You don't have to know HOW. You just have to believe and patiently wait for a performance.
YES is your password. Say Yes in an agreement to the good job He's given you, Yes to the unmerited favor, Yes to the peace of God, Yes to that son of yours coming out of jail, Yes to reconciliation with your partner, Hallelujah... Yes to the child you've been praying for, Yes to the Church growth, Yes to a brand new relationship with God. ooh Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes in Jesus name.

 Share your praise report !

Glitz, Glamour, and Sorrows

What will be your reaction if every day of your life an Angel of the Lord should come to you and confirm how you've been protected by an Angelic host in your going out and coming in, and the desire of God for your success and prosperity?
I can confidently say, sorrow and fear will not be part and parcel of your daily life. You will walk with your head high up above the clouds of negativity and glide in joy and in an aura of peace and joy.

Job 1:10 (Amplified Bible)
Have You not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have conferred prosperity and happiness upon him in the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.Look carefully on the text, you will notice that it was the hand of God upon Job, His enabling power that catapulted him to abundance, security, peace in the home and blessings upon the work of his hands. So in reality, every born again Christian have the same covenant blessing that Job enjoyed but in a higher dimension through Jesus Christ.

Two potent weapons of Satan against the believer-Distraction and Deception. If Satan is able to deceive you into believing that, you are an island and God is not with you - You become worried, depress and afraid of life.

If he is able to distract you from the source of blessings which is God, and cause you to channel your efforts in the pursuit of resources instead of the blesser, it leads to a life time of frustration.

Think about it precious one, Proverbs 10:22 It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich, And He adds no sorrow to it. The bling bling of Hollywood that we so much crave after can sometimes be deceiving and cause us to miss God and true joy.

In the eyes of the public, she was a successful young lady, I have come to admired her just like so many other people because of her rag to riches story, yet Fantasia Barino of American Idol fame was slipping to the grave.

     She was glittering everyday, trying to please the demands of the masses but just like the Titanic she was sinking inwardly.What she didn't have was the joy that only Christ can give. In her own words:

"Glitz and glamour is like an iceberg, what the public see is the top but
at the bottom is Sorrow"

May God hedge you around with His supernatural strength and may your family see His peace this month and confer upon you prosperity and happiness so that your increase shall bring Him glory in Jesus name.

Satan, You fired Me But I'm Rehired.

How do you react after a big time mess, whether in the public eye or privately? Folks, it's only Jesus who could look beyond our sins and mistakes and still see in us greatness and a future that the natural mind can not fathom.

Luke 22:31-32 (New International Version)
31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

On the priority list of the enemy is the destruction of the faith foundation of the believer and your right standing with the father. Just to hinder you from getting to your ultimate purpose. Just pay attention to Jesus on the text; "But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail". Remember in the midst of all this Jesus is Praying for you. I see you coming out beautiful like gold through the fire. Hallelujah!

Simon Peter went ahead and betrayed Jesus that same night,but because of Jesus prayer of grace, though he mess up and failed, Peter saturated with guilt cried, prayed and had a mental forceful turn around, renewed his covenant with the master and became the strengthener of the brethren.

I don't care about the enormity of your mistakes, the grace of God is enough to rehire you to your former position of glory. I see you rehired in Jesus name, the devil is a liar. (Read John 21)

You're Hired Again, before you even prayed this prayer today:

Jesus, Your love for me is so great
I come to you for grace and mercy
Wash me today from my short comings
Renew me with your fresh oil and grace
I receive peace that only you can give
Thank you Jesus for restating me again.

                                                         Amen!