As children bring their broken toys
with tears — for us to mend.
I brought my broken dreams to God,
because … He is my friend!
But then, instead of leaving Him
in peace — to work alone …
I hung around, and tried to help,
with ways that were ‘my own’!
At last, I snatched them back and cried
“how can You be so slow …”?!
“my child …” he said, “… what could I do …”
“… you never did let go!”
anon
The business of faith is to convert truth into reality.
What do you really believe? Take time to catalogue it; are you converting your belief into reality? You say, “I believe God has sanctified me” – does your life prove He has?” ”I believe God has baptized me with the Holy Spirit” – why? Because you had cold shivers and visions and times of prayer?
The proof that we are baptized with the Holy Spirit is that we bear a strong family likeness to Jesus, and that people take knowledge of us, as they did the disciples after Pentecost, that we have been with Jesus; they can recognise the family likeness at once …
There is a great snare especially in evangelical circles of knowing the will of God as expressed in the Bible without the slightest practical working out of it in the life. The Christian religion is the most practical thing on earth. If the Holy Spirit has given you a vision in your private Bible study or during a meeting, which made your heart glow, and your mind expand, and your will stir itself to grasp, you will have to pay to the last penny in concentration along that line until all you saw in vision is made actual!
Oswald Chambers
Urgent Prayer Needed
In a dramatic session before the revolutionary court today in Tehran, Maryam Rustampoor (27) and Marzieh Amirizadeh (30) were told to recant their faith in Christ. Though great pressure was put on them, both women declared that they would not deny their faith. Maryam and Marzieh were originally arrested on March 5, 2009 and have suffered greatly while in prison, suffering ill health, solitary confinement and interrogations for many hours while blindfolded.
On Saturday August 8, Maryam and Marzieh were summoned to appear in court on Sunday August 9 in order to hear a verdict on their case. The chief interrogator had recommended a verdict of ‘apostasy.’ However, when they arrived, no verdict was actually given. Instead, the court session focussed on the deputy prosecutor, Mr Haddad, questioning Maryam and Marzieh about their faith and telling them that they had to recant in both verbal and written form. This made it clear that in the eyes of the court, Maryam and Marzieh’s only crime is that they have converted to Christianity.
Mr. Haddad, asked the two women if they were Christians. “We love Jesus,” they replied. He repeated his question and they said, “Yes, we are Christians.”
Mr. Haddad then said, “You were Muslims and now you have become Christians.”
“We were born in Muslim families, but we were not Muslims,” was their reply.
Mr. Haddad’s questioning continued and he asked them if they regretted becoming Christians, to which they replied, “We have no regrets.”
Then he stated emphatically, “You should renounce your faith verbally and in written form.” They stood firm and replied, “We will not deny our faith.”
During one tense moment in the questioning, Maryam and Marzieh made reference to their belief that God had convicted them through the Holy Spirit. Mr. Haddad told them, “It is impossible for God to speak with humans.”
Marzieh asked him in return, “Are you questioning whether God is Almighty?”
Mr. Haddad then replied, “You are not worthy for God to speak to you.”
Marzieh said, “It is God, and not you, who determines if I am worthy.”
Mr. Haddad told the women to return to prison and think about the options they were given and come back to him when they are ready (to comply). Maryam and Marzieh said, “We have already done our thinking.”
At the end of the session, Mr. Haddad told them that a judge will give them his verdict, though it is not clear who will be the judge in their case now. He also allowed Maryam and Marzieh to have a lawyer represent them in the case for the first time since their arrest.
Both women are back in Evin prison tonight. During their five-month ordeal, both have been unwell and have lost much weight. Marzieh is in pain due to an on-going problem with her spine, as well as an infected tooth and intense headaches.She desperately needs medical attention. Two months ago the prison officials told her the prison had proper medical equipment and that they will attend to her, but so far no proper treatment has been given.
Despite the concentrated effort of officials to pressure them into recanting their faith, Maryam and Marzieh love Jesus and they are determined to stand firm to the very end no matter whatever happens. They have demonstrated their love for Jesus and would offer their lives for Him if they were called to do so. After today’s court session they said, “If we come out of prison we want to do so with honor.”
Maryam and Marzieh’s case is a clear and harsh violation of human rights and religious liberty by Iran’s authorities. They deserve the support of all those who respect human rights and to be released without charges so they can pursue a life of freedom.
Prayforiran.com is a website dedicated to encouraging prayer for the nation and people ofIran. As well as highlighting special prayer needs, the site provides 40 subjects for prayer to help you and your church pray intelligently for Iran. Simply click on one of the 40 links to take you to a page which will help you learn about the subject and guide you in praying. Each page has a slide show with images from Iran accompanied by some Persian worship music to help you intercede.
This site was launched by Elam Ministries in May 2006 when over 120 Iranian church leaders pledged to 40 days of prayer and fasting for Iran. They also issued a call to the global Church to join in praying for the strategic country of Iran. Many thousands across the world responded and joined in praying for Iran, and the site became available in nine languages.
Iran has long played a leading role in the Islamic world. These days it is at the centre of a global crisis that could easily lead to war, deep political turmoil and economic chaos. We need to fall on our knees and pray that God, in His mercy, will intervene.
Also, the rapidly growing Iranian church is on the brink of unprecedented growth. Despite the prospect of persecution, men and women, young and old are putting their faith in Jesus Christ – many as a result of dreams and visions. We need to thank God for the open hearts and we want to cry out for a great revival. A strong church in Iran will impact the entire region.
For the persecuted Church in Iran – The Church has experienced severe persecution and restrictions since the 1979 revolution. In the last year, this intimidation of Christians has intensified. We pray for protection, wisdom and boldness for our brothers and sisters in Iran.
For Revival in Iran – Most of Iran’s 70 million people have never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. We pray that every Iranian will hear and understand the Gospel and that millions will repent and be saved.
For God to intervene in the political situation – We pray that God will give Iran righteous and humble leaders who will act justly and love mercy.
We encourage you to pray with faith and love for the people of Iran, not with fear and prejudice. Let the Lord show you how much he loves and cares for the people of Iran, just as he loved and cared for the people of Nineveh as in the story of Jonah. Secondly, please focus your prayers on the people of Iran – that they would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Don’t concentrate only on the political situation.
Finally, please let as many others know about this website as you can. http://www.prayerforiran.com/
Thank you so much for praying for Iran.
To God be the Glory.
Now I’m returning to you. I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing so my people can experience My joy completed in them. I gave them your word; the godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways, just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world. I’m consecrating myself for their sakes so they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission [John 17:13/19 THE MESSAGE]
How does that statement of our Lord fit in with our ideas of sanctification?
Sanctification must never be made synonymous with purification; Jesus Christ had no need of purification and yet He used the word sanctify.
In the words, “I sanctify myself,” Jesus gives the key to the saint’s life. Self is not sinful; if it were, how could Jesus say “I sanctify myself”? Jesus Christ had no sin to deny, no wrong self to deny; He had only a holy self. It was that self He denied all the time, and it was self that Satan tried to make him obey.
What could be holier than the will of the holy Son of God? And yet all through He said, “not as I will, but as You will.” It was the denying of His holy self that made the marvelous beauty of our Lord’s life.
If we have entered into the experience of sanctification, what are we doing with our holy selves? Do we every morning we waken thank God that we have a self to give to Him, a self that He has purified and adjusted and baptized with the Holy Spirit so that we might sacrifice it to Him?
Sacrifice in its essence is the exuberant, passionate love-gift of the best I have to the one I love best. The best gift the Son of God had was His holy manhood, and He gave that as a love-gift to God that He might use it as an atonement for the world.
He poured out His soul to death, and that is to be the characteristic of our lives. God is at perfect liberty to waste us if He chooses. We are sanctified for one purpose only, that we might sanctify our sanctification and give it to God.
We never know the joy of self-sacrifice until we abandon in every particular. Self-surrender is the most difficult thing – “I will if…I Oh, well, I suppose I must devote my life to God” … there is none of the joy of self-sacrifice in that.
As soon as we do abandon, the Holy Spirit gives us an intimation of the joy of Jesus. The final aim of self-sacrifice is laying down our lives for our Friend. When the Holy Spirit comes in, the great desire is to lay down the life for Jesus, and the thought of sacrifice never touches us because sacrifice is the love passion of the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord is our example in the life of self-sacrifice – “I delight to do Your will, O my God.” He went on with His sacrifice with exuberant joy. Have I ever yielded in absolute submission to Jesus Christ? If Jesus Christ is not the lodestar, there is no benefit in the sacrifice; but when the sacrifice is made with the eyes on Him, slowly and surely the moulding influence begins to tell.
Beware of letting natural affinities hinder your walk in love. One of the most cruel ways of killing natural love is by disdain built on natural affinities. The affinity of the saint is the Lord Jesus. Love for God is not sentimental, for the saint to love as God loves is the most practical thing.
“I have called you friends.” It is a friendship based on the new life created in us which has no affinity with our old life, but only with the life of God. It is unutterably humble, unsulliedly pure, and absolutely devoted to God.
Oswald Chambers
He is a holy God…He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. – JOSHUA 24:19
Have you ever been convicted of sin by conscience through the Spirit of God? If you have, you know this–that God dare not forgive you and be God.
There is a lot of sentimental talk about God forgiving because He is love: God is so holy that He cannot forgive. God can only destroy forever the thing that is unlike Himself.
The atonement does not mean that God forgives a sinner and allows him to go on sinning and receiving forgiveness; it means that God saves the sinner and turns him into a saint, that is, destroys the sinner out of him, and through his conscience he realizes that by the atonement God has done what He never could have done apart from it.
When people testify, you can always tell whether they have been convicted by the Spirit of God or whether their equilibrium has been disturbed by doing wrong things. When one is convicted of sin by the Spirit of God through one’s conscience, one’s relationship to other people is absolute child’s play.
If when you were convicted of sin you had been told to go and lick the dust off the boots of your greatest enemy, you would have done it willingly. Your relationship to others is the last thing that bothers you. It is your relationship to God that bothers you. I am completely out of the love of God, out of the holiness of God, and I tremble with terror when I think of God drawing near.
Oswald Chambers
I’m letting you into my life a bit more here … sharing this with you ‘warts-and-all’ is nothing compared to the beautiful encouragement and testimony it brought …
Hi [****], just wanted to check in and [encourage] you as I hate seeing you so down. Sorry to hear something is bothering you. Hope you will have an answer soon.
You and [wife] have helped me in ways you probably don’t know about so I want to encourage you that God is well pleased with you and that it’s normal to be tired. It must be so hard for people like the two of you because when you’re on the front line with God you can always see someone in need. When I read the gospels I tend to think of the crowds and how Jesus dealt with that. I hope I’m remembering right…sometimes the disciples had a boat on standby, sometimes Jesus went and prayed alone, sometimes Jesus addressed the crowd and sometimes Jesus just looked to one person. I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s not possible to do everything and you can ask God for a little bit of rest if you need it.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you and [wife] for the help that you have given me and to apologise for the times when I’ve been difficult. I was so out of control that nobody at church really knew what to do with me. I kept running out of the services and you kept talking me back into them. One day based on something you said at the front door that I really respected… I made a decision that I was going to stop running out of church. This was very important at the time as I’d just suddenly given up a serious relationship with Jack Daniels and other hard drink. Praise God for freedom! OK, you gave me a reason to keep attending the church. So, what happened next? I met [wife] who in turn met a really big need in my life by inviting me to the girly Bible study. I was desperate to get into the Word but I was struggling over a knotty faith lump. [wife] helped me out of it in about 5 minutes by talking about God in her life. I count these two incidents among the most significant in the development of my faith in recent months. Thank you to both of you for making the effort.
Well, it’s gone midnight so I’m going to stop giving unsolicited opinion. Please forgive me if this message is out of order. Hope you have a good week. 
cheesy grin
I was so encouraged by her email that I asked if she’d mind me placing her testimony on my Blog. She responded …
If you can make use of anything I have typed then blog on, all glory to God who can cross any boundary, conquer any division and rescue any man.
When I was 19 and totally into the world… I was alone in hospital one night due to a mixture of sinning, not even knowing if I would survive until morning and in the quiet God gently said ‘Here I am’.
3 years later… on a “‘whim” I walked into the [church] for the first time on Good Friday. Since the first day that I wandered into [church] God has blessed me so many times in so many ways, including healing my (excruciating) heart pain on a Sunday morning in the church car park.
It’s recently dawned on me that God really can do anything and there’s nothing else I want but to serve because I want to see God set more people free. Only one way forward >>>>> Good stuff!!
Sorry if I sound a bit too happy, I’m very excited about what God is doing in [our town].
K x
Salvation and power are established! Kingdom of our God, authority of his Messiah! The Accuser of our brothers and sisters thrown out, who accused them day and night before God. They defeated him through the blood of the Lamb and the bold word of their witness. They weren’t in love with themselves; they were willing to die for Christ. So rejoice, O Heavens, and all who live here, but doom to earth and sea, For the Devil’s come down on you with both feet; he’s had a great fall; He’s wild and raging with anger; he hasn’t much time and he knows it. Revelation 5:12 (The Message)
The childish idea that because God is great He can do anything, good or bad, right or wrong and we must say nothing is erroneous!
The meaning of moral worth is that certain things are impossible to it: it is impossible for God to lie; it is impossible for Jesus Christ to contradict His own holiness or to become other than He is.
The profound truth for us is that Jesus Christ is the worthy one not because He was God incarnate, but because He was God incarnate on the human plane!
“Coming in the likeness of men” He accepted our limitations and lived on this earth a life of perfect holiness.
Napoleon said of Jesus Christ that He had succeeded in making of every human soul an appendage of His own – why? Because He had the genius of holiness!
There have been great military geniuses, intellectual giants, geniuses of politics, but these only exercise influence over a limited number of people; Jesus Christ exercises unlimited sway over humanity because He is the altogether worthy one!
Oswald Chambers
‘My peace I give you…Do not let your hearts be troubled and…afraid.’ JOHN 14:27
The peace Jesus gives brings a sense of assurance that no matter what happens, you know ‘it is well with my soul.’
He says to us: ‘My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and…afraid.’
The peace Jesus gives doesn’t depend on conditions and circumstances. It comes from knowing you’re God’s child and that your Father controls the universe, loves you and always has your best interests at heart. That’s why people who’ve lost everything will often tell you they wouldn’t trade what they’ve learned, even if it meant recouping all their losses.
Joni Erikson Tada discovered a supernatural peace when an accident confined her to a wheelchair, and Corrie Ten Boom found it in a Nazi death camp. Missionary Elisabeth Elliot found it ministering to the Indian tribe who massacred her husband. She wrote, ‘Only in acceptance lies peace…not in resignation.’ There’s a big difference!
Author Creath Davis points out that: ‘Resignation is surrender to fate. Acceptance is surrender to God. Resignation lies down quietly in an empty universe. Acceptance rises up to meet the God who fills that universe with purpose and destiny. Resignation says, ‘I can’t.’ Acceptance says, ‘God can.’ Resignation paralyszes the life process. Acceptance releases the process for its greatest creativity. Resignation says, ‘It’s all over for me.’ Acceptance says, ‘Now that I’m here, what’s next, Lord?’ Resignation says, ‘What a waste.’ Acceptance says, ‘In what redemptive way will you use this mess, Lord?’ Resignation says, ‘I’m alone.’ Acceptance says, ‘I belong to you, Lord.’
The Word for Today – UCB
If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best! 2 Corinthians 4:7/12 (The Message)
By ‘actual’ is meant the things we come in contact with by our senses, and by ‘real’ that which lies behind – those things we cannot get at by our senses.
The fanatic sees only the real and ignores the actual; the materialist looks at the actual only and ignores the real.
The only sane being who ever trod this earth was Jesus Christ because in Him the actual and the real were one.
Jesus Christ does not stand first in the actual world, He stands first in the real world; that is why the ‘natural man’ does not bother his head about Him – ‘the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him.”
When we are born from above, we begin to see the actual things in the light of the real. We say that prayer alters things, but prayer does not alter things nearly so much as it alters the person who sees the actual things.
In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord brings the actual and the real together.
Oswald Chambers
For I tell you, unless your righteousness (your uprightness and your right standing with God) is more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:20 (Amplified Bible)
“Unless your righteousness exceeds” – not be different from, but “exceed,” that is, we have to be all they are and infinitely more!
We have to be right in our external behaviour, but we have to be as right, and ‘righter’, in our internal behaviour! We have to be right in our words and actions, but we have to be as right in out thoughts and feelings. We have to be right according to the conventions of the society of godly people, but we have also to be right in conscience towards God.
Nominal Christians are often without the ordinary moral integrity of the person who does not care a bit about Jesus Christ, not because they are hypocrites, but because we have been taught for generations to think on one aspect only of Jesus Christ’s salvation, that is the revelation that salvation is not merited by us, but is the sheer sovereign act of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
A grand marvelous revelation fact, but Jesus says we have got to say ‘Tank You’ for our salvation, and the ‘Thank You’ is that our righteousness is to exceed the righteousness of the most moral people on earth.
Jesus not only demands that our external lives are above censure but that we are above censure where God sees us. We see the meaning now of saying that Jesus is the most tantalizing teacher: He demands that we be so pure that god – who sees to the most inmost springs of our motives, the inmost dreams of our dreams, sees nothing to censure.
We may go on evolving and evolving, but we shall never produce that kind of purity. Then what’s the good of teaching it?
Listen: “if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin …” That is the gospel.
Oswald Chambers
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