VIDEO Holy, Holy, Holy – Blessed Assurance

Holy, Holy, Holy – Blessed Assurance – Avalon

This is another great song by Avalon at a South Florida Concert

Jesus, Our Life Preserver

John 3:16-18

Picture a muddy river, swollen with rain and rushing over rocks. You’ve fallen into that dirty water and cannot fight the current for long. Your head goes under once, then twice, and both times you come up sputtering after swallowing some of the filth. A third dunking might kill you. Suddenly, from the shore, someone throws a life preserver, which floats past your chest. Will you grab it?

The answer seems obvious—of course you would! But too often people drowning in the world’s fast-moving current refuse to grab onto the spiritual life preserver: Jesus Christ. He died on the cross for all of humanity, but individuals have a responsibility in salvation. A person must recognize his or her own helplessness and acknowledge the need for Christ. That means the new Christian accepts Jesus’ sacrifice as true and personal, believing that there is no other way to be rescued.

It isn’t necessary to understand everything about faith and the Bible in order to be saved—God will ensure that His children learn whatever they need from the Holy Spirit. However, it is critical to realize that we cannot save ourselves.

Can you point to a time in your life when you received Jesus Christ as your Savior? God is calling, longing for you to recognize your need for Him and to pray for rescue from sin. He is faithful to answer by saving you and making you blameless before Him.

God is offering you a life preserver and waiting to pull you to eternal safety. The choice is yours. Will you choose Christ and live?

The Sacrifice of Praise For His Goodness and….

“Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” (Psalm 107:21)

We continue studying through the thoughtful hymn of dedication “Take My Life and Let It Be.” Verse three reads:

Take my voice and let me sing
Always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.

One factor that separates us from the animals is our ability to formulate distinct words and string them together with syntax to communicate complex concepts. The barks and grunts and whistles of animals may convey meaning of sorts but certainly not abstract thought. Only the image of God in man (Genesis 1:27) can communicate directly with other humans and with the Creator of all. The highest use of this ability is to praise and worship Him.

As we worship Him through our singing and praise, our spirits seemingly soar the heavens and enter into sweet fellowship with Him. Here, we can tell Him our burdens and requests and know that He hears us. Praising Him is not only our duty but our blessed privilege and source of blessing.

One day we will gather with heavenly beings and the redeemed of all the ages, praising Him for His great works of creation and redemption. “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created”; and “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 4:11; 5:9). JDM

Why go I mourning?

Why go I mourning?” (Psalm 42:9.)

CANST thou answer this, believer? Canst thou find any reason why thou art so often mourning instead of rejoicing? Why yield to gloomy anticipations? Who told thee that the night would never end in day? Who told thee that the winter of thy discontent would proceed from frost to frost, from snow and ice, and hail, to deeper snow, and yet more heavy tempest of de-pair? Knowest thou not that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, that spring and summer succeed winter? Hope thou then! Hope thou ever! for God fails thee not. —C. H. Spurgeon.

“He was better to me than all my hopes;
He was better than all my fears;
He made a bridge of my broken works,
And a rainbow of my tears.

“The billows that guarded my sea-girt path,
But carried my Lord on their crest;
When I dwell on the days of my wilderness march
I can lean on His love for the rest.

“He emptied my hands of my treasured store,
And His covenant love revealed,
There was not a wound in my aching heart,
But the balm of His breath hath healed.

Oh, tender and true was the chastening sore,
In wisdom, that taught and tried,
Till the soul that He sought was trusting in Him,
And nothing on earth beside.

“He guided by paths that I could not see,
By ways that I have not known;
The crooked was straight, and the rough was plain
As I followed the Lord alone.

I praise Him still for the pleasant palms,
And the water-springs by the way,
For the glowing pillar of flame by night,
And the sheltering cloud by day.

“Never a watch on the dreariest halt,
But some promise of love endears;
I read from the past, that my future shall be
Far better than all my fears.

Like the golden pot, of the wilderness bread,
Laid up with the blossoming rod,
All safe in the ark, with the law of the Lord,
Is the covenant care of my God.”

Who of God is made unto us wisdom

“Who of God is made unto us wisdom.” 1 Corinthians 1:30

Man’s intellect seeks after rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are snared in the old net in which the Grecians were taken, and have a hankering to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism, and bewitched them with all sorts of heresies.

This is the root of Neology, and the other fine things which in days gone by were so fashionable in Germany, and are now so ensnaring to certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your education may be, if you be the Lord’s, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker, or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, that will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided, can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge.

All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Broad-church thinkers would approve of, must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the ploughboy’s eye flash with joy, and glads the pious pauper’s heart—”Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when He is believingly received, but apart from Him the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” “A good understanding have all they that do His commandments.”

Just, and the justifier of him which believeth

“Just, and the justifier of him which believeth.” Romans 3:26

Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of His people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards the pillar of our confidence and peace!

If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer—having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Not God, for He hath justified; not Christ, for He hath died, “yea rather hath risen again.” My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen.

God’s Phone Number

GOD’S “PHONE” NUMBER

Hello God, I called tonight
To talk a little while
I need a friend who’ll listen
To my anxiety and trial.

You see, I can’t quite make it
Through a day just on my own…
I need your love to guide me,
So I’ll never feel alone.
I want to ask you please to keep,
My family safe and sound.
Come and fill their lives with confidence
For whatever fate they’re bound.

Give me faith, dear God, to face
Each hour throughout the day,
And not to worry over things
I can’t change in any way.
I thank you God, for being home
And listening to my call,
For giving me such good advice
When I stumble and fall.. !!!!!!!

Your number, God, is the only one
That answers every time.
I never get a busy signal,
Never had to pay a dime.

So thank you, God, for listening
To my troubles and my sorrow.
Good night, God, I love You, too,
And I’ll call again tomorrow!

P.S. Please bless all my friends and family too.