Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young: BE STILL

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,  though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah Psalm 46:1-3

I AM your refuge and strength, an ever-present Help in trouble. Therefore, you don't need to be afraid of anything -- not even cataclysmic circumstances. 

The media are increasingly devoted to fear-inducing subject matter: terrorism, serial killers, environmental catastrophes. If you focus on such dangers and forget that I am your Refuge in all circumstances, you will become increasingly fearful. Every day I manifest My grace in countless places and situations, but the media take no notice. I shower not only blessings but also outright miracles on your planet.

As you grow closer to Me, I open your eyes to see more and more of My Presence all around you. Things that most people hardly notice, like shifting shades of sunlight, fill you with heart-bursting joy. You have eyes that see and ears that hear, so proclaim My abiding Presence in the world.

Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face, Psalm 89:15

His Birth and Our New Birth: By Oswald Chambers

"Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, "God with us." —Matthew 1:23

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His Birth in History. “…that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not emerge out of history; He came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being the human race can boast of— He is a Being for whom the human race can take no credit at all. He is not man becoming God, but God Incarnate— God coming into human flesh from outside it. His life is the highest and the holiest entering through the most humble of doors. Our Lord’s birth was an advent— the appearance of God in human form.

His Birth in Me. “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you…” (Galatians 4:19). Just as our Lord came into human history from outside it, He must also come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a “Bethlehem” for the Son of God? I cannot enter the realm of the kingdom of God unless I am born again from above by a birth totally unlike physical birth. “You must be born again” (John 3:7). This is not a command, but a fact based on the authority of God. The evidence of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that “Christ is formed” in me. And once “Christ is formed” in me, His nature immediately begins to work through me.

God Evident in the Flesh. This is what is made so profoundly possible for you and for me through the redemption of man by Jesus Christ.

A Blessed Fact: God Has Never Been Silent: by AW Tozer

God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things Hebrews 1:1, 2

I THINK IT MAY BE ACCEPTED AS AXIOMATIC that God is constantly trying to speak to man. He desires to communicate Himself, to impart holy ideas to those of His creatures capable of receiving them. The Second Person of the Godhead is called the Word of God, that is, the mind of God in expression.
Are you aware that many Christians appear to believe that God spoke the Holy Scriptures into being and then lapsed into silence, a silence that will not be broken until God calls all men before Him into judgment? If that is true, we have the Bible as a deposit of embalmed truth which scribe and theologian must decipher as they can.
This view is extremely injurious to the Christian’s soul, for it holds that God is no longer speaking, and thus we are shut up to our intellects for the understanding and apprehension of truth. According to this notion the human mind becomes the final arbiter of truth as well as the organ for its reception into the soul.
Now, the blessed fact is that God is not silent and has never been silent, but is speaking in His universe. The written Word is effective because, and only because, the Living Word is speaking in Heaven and the Living Voice is sounding in the earth!  And it is the Spirit that bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one

This is the one who came by water and blood--Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.  For there are three that testify: 1 John 5:6, 7

Christ Centrality: by TA Sparks

His name is the Word of God. (Revelation 19:13)

There is one all-governing fact which runs right through the ages. It is that Christ is in all the thoughts and ways of God. That is a statement that is comprehensive. Through all the ages, in all the thoughts of God, and in all the ways of God, Christ is central, Christ is supreme. Everything relates to Him, and everything connects with Him; Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning. If we could stand by the side of God and see through God’s eyes, and become governed by God’s mentality, we should recognize that God has but one thought and that one thought is influencing Him in every one of His dealings with men, with nations, and with the world throughout all the ages. That one thought centers in His Son, Jesus Christ, and therefore the very essence of revelation, and the very heart of spiritual enlightenment is that you see Christ in all those thoughts and ways of God as they are expressed in His Word and in His activities.

If you ask: "What is revelation, what is it to have spiritual enlightenment?" The answer is this: that you are able to see in a living and ever-growing way God’s thoughts as centered in Christ. We could put that in another way, and say that you are growingly able to see Christ and His place and His meaning in this universe, that this universe is interpreted and explained in the light of Christ, and that everything in our own lives in God’s dealings with us, is connected with Christ in some way. If that is true universally, and if that is true sovereignly and providentially; if that is true not only in the whole history of things in this universe, but true in a special way in human life, it is true, perhaps, in the most essential way in the Word of God as the expression of God’s thought. So that revelation, spiritual illumination, is to see Christ in all the Word of God; not truths, not doctrines, but Christ.... The question then, that we ever need to ask, is: In what way does this or that lead us to Christ? In what way does this mean an increase of Christ, a knowledge of Him in a living and experimental way? We are looking for what is of Christ.

The Sleeping Church Cannot Resist Her Enemies: by AW Tozer

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.  The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Romans 13:11-12

Some day the Church can relax her guard, call her watchmen down from the wall and live in safety and peace—but not yet, not yet!

All that is good in the world stands as a target for all that is evil and manages to stay alive only by constant watchfulness and the providential protection of Almighty God.

The Church lives in a hostile world. Within and around her are enemies that not only could destroy her, but are meant to and will unless she resists force with yet greater force. The Christian would collapse from sheer external pressure were there not within him a counterpressure sufficiently great to prevent it. The power of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not optional but necessary. Without it the children of God simply cannot live the life of heaven on earth. The hindrances are too many and too effective!

A church is a living organism and is subject to attack from such enemies as prey on living things. The human body can fight its enemies even while it is asleep, but the Church cannot. She must be awake and determined—or she cannot win.

She must recognize her enemies for what they are and she must resist them: Unbelief, Complacency, Self-righteousness, Fear of Man, Love of Luxury, Secret Sympathy with the world, Self-confidence, Pride and Unholy thoughts. These we must resist with every power within us, looking unto Jesus, author and finisher of our faith!

Love + Listen: Jesus Calling: by Sarah Young

Isaiah 50:4
The Lord God has given me
    the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word
    him who is weary.
Morning by morning he awakens;
    he awakens my ear
    to hear as those who are taught.

I am speaking in the depths of your being. Be still, so that you can hear My voice. I speak in the language of Love; My words fill you with Life and Peace, Joy and Hope. I desire to talk with all of My children, but many are too busy to listen. The "work ethic" has them tied up in knots. They submit wholeheartedly to this taskmaster, wondering why they feel so distant from Me.
Living close to Me requires making Me your First Love -- your highest priority. As you seek My Presence above all else, you experience Peace and Joy in full measure. I also am blessed when you make Me first in your life. While you journey through life in My Presence, My Glory brightens the world around you.

  Revelation 2:4
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
  Isaiah 60:2
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
    and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
    and his glory will be seen upon you.

Enlarge Your Tent! By Henry Blackaby

Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes. Isaiah 54:2

When God comes to a life in power, it is always a time of rejoicing and expectation for the future! Isaiah described this experience as similar to that of a child born to a previously barren woman. The child’s arrival changes everything! Life cannot continue as usual! Whereas the dwelling place might have been large enough for two, it must now be made bigger. The child’s presence causes the parents to completely rearrange the way they were living.

Isaiah proclaimed that when God comes, you must make room for Him in your life. You must “enlarge the place of your tent” because God’s presence will add new dimensions to your life, your family, and your church. You do not simply “add Christ on” to your busy life and carry on with business as usual. When Christ is your Lord, everything changes. Whereas before you may not have expected good things to come through you or in your life, now you should have a spirit of optimism. You ought to expect your life to become richer and fuller. You can anticipate God blessing others through your life. You can look for God to demonstrate His power through your life in increasing measure.

As a Christian, how do you make room for Christ in your life? You repent of your sin. You allow Christ the freedom to do what He wants in you. You watch eagerly for His activity in your life and in your family and in your church. You live your life with the expectancy that Christ will fill you with His power in the days to come and will “stretch” you to do things in His service that you have never done before.

The Impartial Power of God: By Oswald Chambers

We trample the blood of the Son of God underfoot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only reason for the forgiveness of our sins by God, and the infinite depth of His promise to forget them, is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the result of our personal realization of the atonement by the Cross of Christ, which He has provided for us. “…Christ Jesus…became for us wisdom from God— and righteousness and sanctification and redemption…” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Once we realize that Christ has become all this for us, the limitless joy of God begins in us. And wherever the joy of God is not present, the death sentence is still in effect.

No matter who or what we are, God restores us to right standing with Himself only by means of the death of Jesus Christ. God does this, not because Jesus pleads with Him to do so but because He died. It cannot be earned, just accepted. All the pleading for salvation which deliberately ignores the Cross of Christ is useless. It is knocking at a door other than the one which Jesus has already opened. We protest by saying, “But I don’t want to come that way. It is too humiliating to be received as a sinner.” God’s response, through Peter, is, “… there is no other name…by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). What at first appears to be heartlessness on God’s part is actually the true expression of His heart. There is unlimited entrance His way. “In Him we have redemption through His blood…” (Ephesians 1:7). To identify with the death of Jesus Christ means that we must die to everything that was never a part of Him.

God is just in saving bad people only as He makes them good.

OUR LORD DOES NOT PRETEND WE ARE ALL RIGHT WHEN WE ARE ALL WRONG.

The atonement by the Cross of Christ is the propitiation God uses to make unholy people holy.