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Sin yields sorrow; salvation yields peace and joy.
If you love the Lord Jesus, you should tell Him.
God says He will bless us when we obey Him.
To have fellowship with the Lord Jesus is far more important than to work for Him.
May every morning become your life's new beginning.
The Bible was given to us as a teacher for this present age. Have you read it?
For the continuous growth of life in Christ, you need ceaseless prayer.
God says, "I will keep thee." Faith answers, "Lord! I thank You because You surely will keep me."
If God puts the tears of His people in a bottle, how could He not listen to their prayers?
The mercy of God, the love of Christ, and the coming glory are all calling God's children to offer their lives.
To have a true walk with God just one time can cause your heart to marvel and worship more than a hundred years of walking on this earth by natural sight. Your duty is to be at rest in God's hand under whatever circumstances there may be.
God reveals Himself when we are in need (Exo. 15:22-26). When we consider ourselves to be strong, we rely on our own strength, resulting in spiritual weakness. When we know how useless we are and thus rely on His strength, we are strong.
Difficulties provide the atmosphere for miracles and are the initial step to miracles. If there is to be a great miracle, what is encountered must not only be something hard, but something absolutely impossible to overcome. Whether the Lord has spoken or not, we can fully trust in a Savior who is without worry or fear.
If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.
Your Leader will lead you to walk an untrodden way, to go down a path you never dreamed of. He is afraid of nothing, and He wishes you to be afraid of nothing also. He is with you. In desperate situations it is His joy to see His children grasping His hands.
Contentment is a virtue of the saint. The first step toward it is to offer up everything to God. Taking God as all gives one a heart of contentment.
Saints who entangle themselves with the world cannot help but crave for vainglory. Vainglory, like all other kinds of glories in the world, cannot satisfy man's heart. No matter how much fame a believer may gain, he will never be satisfied.
Blessed is he who knows that the Lord Jesus is our all! If we have never ascended with the Lord to see all the vanities under the sun, it will be hard for us not to set our mind on things of this earth. If we have not been enlightened by the Holy Spirit to see that what we have is forever and is real, we too will be greedy. Praise God, He is the treasure to those who believe in Him.
Saints of God, do not covet fame. We should be hidden in God. Those pursuing a great name are most likely wounded by Satan. Those who are hidden in the Lord's hand, how secure and peaceful they are!
It is abnormal for a saint to seek worldly glories. Those who love the Lord do not wish to be great in this world. Among the saints in the church of God, however, many still crave for a high position and to be called Rabbi. The crisis with the saints is not in the world but in the church!
How wise is the Lord! He told us to call each other only brother and to use no other title. It is regrettable that many, even among the brothers, want to be a great brother! If we have not allowed the Holy Spirit to work the Spirit of the cross in us, we cannot avoid a wicked heart to pursue a name.
Many consider that the world is in the world, without realizing that the world is also in the church and in the hearts of the saints! Unless one is truly dead to the world, it is hard to rid oneself of this kind of heart. Only those saints who have truly died with the Lord on the cross can be dead to the world in the church and in their hearts.
To not go after vainglory is a matter of the heart. If the Lord wants to put us in a prominent position, we should be willing and not shrink from it. Regrettably, the fame we secure comes from our own seeking. In our heart we covet a great name. If we are willing to rest in God's hand, seeking only His pleasure, not caring for other people's envying or rejecting, and considering wherever He puts us as the best position for us, we are in the position the Lord wants us to be.
To be hidden is not to be withdrawn. To be really hidden is not to be hidden with the hope of getting a name. To be hidden is not to hide somewhere physically but to have our inward being rest in God's bosom.
This present age is a commercial age. Whatever we deal with is a matter of politics. How pitiful that even believers are influenced by this! We should know the difference between sincerity and politics. There is a heaven-to-earth difference between loving people with a sincere heart and loving people politically.
To love others with a sincere heart is to have a love that issues from the heart. To love politically is to have a love from the mind. To love in sincerity is an expression of genuineness. To love politically is an outward act with much reluctance. Sincere love is very spontaneous, in which the inward agrees with the outward. Political love is performed, and the inward does not correspond to what is outward.
The acts of fleshly Christians are for the most part politically motivated. Their conduct is not spontaneous, and there is no spontaneous outflow of their real feeling. Rather, they act because they are afraid of people's criticism or are desirous of others' praise. Take the case of brotherly love. Their expression in loving the brothers comes not from their real love, but through fear that others would criticize their spirituality if they do not do this. Alas! The love of many is heartless and false. May the Lord save us from this.
Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13 really penetrate our mind and thought. Even an act as great as giving our body to be burned can be done without love! This kind of love is not of a sincere heart, but is political. This is why the apostle said, "I profit nothing" (v. 3).
Political love is outward, in which the mouth and the heart do not agree. There is merely an outward shell. Within the shell, there is no gracious work of God. This self-deceit and deceiving of others is but the plot of Satan.
At any rate, this kind of love is the playing of politics. Playing of politics cannot last long. After a while the true inward condition will be exposed! This kind of performance and reluctant love will not be any help whatsoever to us spiritually.
Brothers, we should rely on the Lord's cross and do away with all malice that we may have in our hearts, "Love one another from a pure heart fervently" (1 Pet. 1:22; 4:8). "Little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue but in deed and truthfulness" (1 John 3:18).
The Bible forbids judging others (Matt. 7:1). Under no circumstances should the saints of God criticize others. Today too many Christians act as judges of their brothers! I often hear this saying, "Christians are the best critics." This is a common sickness among believers. We should ask the Lord to set a watch before our mouths and keep the door of our lips.
Judging others is related to what we know. We are more apt to judge when we do not know the full picture. We are also apt to criticize when we are too clear in our reasonings.
It is thoughtless for one to judge presumptuously according to hearsay without first knowing the real situation! Others have their secrets; how could we know them all? How unfair it is for us to criticize others presumptuously without first knowing everything! We should not dare to judge others, because we do not have full factual knowledge concerning them. Although at times we think we have all the facts, it is possible that there may still be misunderstandings. We should remember how bad we feel and how our heart suffers when we are mistakenly judged by others! The others may think that all the facts are true as well! In like manner, when we criticize others, we may think that we know all the facts, without realizing that there are still hidden factors, like the case of our judging others. We feel bad when we are judged. Why then should we make others feel bad?
What a pity that many times biblical knowledge only helps people to criticize others! The more knowledge a person has in his head, the more critical he becomes. What benefit will this knowledge be to him? Knowledge that comes from books or that is collected from mental exercise usually forms our basis for judging others! The clearer a person is concerning biblical truths, the more he knows how to criticize others in a mean way.
At any rate, God has not ordained such a one to be the judge. Those who criticize others will in turn be criticized before Christ's judgment seat. God does not take pleasure in those who only know how to speak about others' shortcomings, but who never check concerning themselves. We should never seek the will of God for others. God knows how to lead everyone. God can lead you; He can also lead others. Do not think that, just because you consider that something is not the will of God, it is therefore not the will of God, and that you can therefore proceed to judge your brothers. God is responsible for their actions and deeds. We need not be concerned for them.
Many times God has forgiven a person, yet we still judge such a one. It seems as if man is more righteous than God! May we not fall to such a degree! If God could forbear our brother's mistake, why can we not bear the same? We should not expose the sin that God has covered. To continue in judgment is of no benefit to others, and it is harmful to ourselves. Those who do so forget how God has been merciful to them.
Children of God, at difficult times such as now, what is lacking is not your harsh judgments, but your tender love. Do not increase others' tears and suffering through your knowledge. May we bind up the wounds of all our neighbors with the wine of joy and the oil of the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:34). May we comfort others and not criticize them.
In my observation, I see a shortcoming among the saints today, which is their talkativeness and their not aspiring to be quiet (1 Thes. 4:11). Many are not at all lively, whereas others are too lively! Those who have received more grace from God will surely bow their heads low. But those who have not been deeply rooted in Jesus Christ are bound to be frivolous in their behavior. Proverbs says, "A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself" (18:2). How true this is! Often those without the Lord's perfecting work like to make a show of their merits. But if we have been in the Lord and have been nurtured much by Him, we will agree with Jeremiah, "Let him sit alone and be silent,/Because He has laid it upon him" (Lam. 3:28).
A living of quietness is often one that gives off fragrance. If we speak less, our words will become more powerful. Much speaking is a sign of spiritual leakage. The Lord Jesus said of the Holy Spirit, "He will glorify Me, for He will receive of Mine and will declare it to you....He will not speak from Himself" (13, John 16:14). A person who is full of the Holy Spirit will have such a life. If something is not from the Lord, such a one will not speak to others about it. Every word he utters is not according to himself. We should not speak what we want to speak, but speak only after we have heard the Lord's word. If we obey the Holy Spirit in this point, our daily conversation will be cut by more than half! This is the only way to glorify our Lord. If the Spirit glorifies the Lord by what He says, how should those who claim to be full of the Holy Spirit behave?
How our natural being loves to express what we know! If those brothers and sisters ahead of us in the Lord have teachings that we only half understand, we are so apt to say, "I know this already. Indeed, this is what I have been doing all the time." When the Lord's servant preaches, how we love to show that we are different from others who know nothing about what is being preached. Little do we realize that we know less than others do. Our eagerness to express ourselves only proves our shallowness in knowledge. A life of quietness is a life that possesses real knowledge!
When facing a welcoming crowd, how difficult it is to be quiet! This does not mean merely to keep our mouth closed, but to be inwardly unmoved. The temptation then is to add some words, directly or indirectly, to broadcast our own merits. At such times it would be wonderful if we could remain unmoved by outward influences and would maintain a cool attitude!
When we are despised by others, it is hard for us to maintain our composure without murmuring behind the backs of others. It is even harder to be quiet before the Lord in addition to remaining silent before men. A person can do this only if his inner man is not stirred up.
A quiet life is one in which a person is quiet in his spirit and is not influenced by the outward world. It is not merely to speak little. There are those in the world who are born with few words. But there are none that are born "quiet." Those who speak few words have turmoil in their heart just as everyone else does; they may even have more turmoil than others do. Certainly those who are quiet are few in words. For a person to grit his teeth to refrain from speaking is not quietness, for the heart is still in turmoil.
Unless the cross works deeply in man's heart, no one can be quiet. Only when the Holy Spirit works in us the meaning of the cross, to the extent that the Spirit takes over our whole being, can there be the possibility of being quiet. Our Lord is indeed a good pattern for us. When the multitude forced Him to be king, He retreated to the wilderness (John 6:15). When He stood before Pontius Pilate, He would not utter a word (Matt. 27:12-14). His outward silence showed that He was not disturbed inwardly.
