Honor God's Spirit: by A.W. Tozer

Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

      I think there are great numbers of Christian believers who ought to go home and go into their places of prayer and apologize to God for their demeaning attitudes toward the Holy Spirit of God. Included in their numbers are Bible teachers who are guilty of leading us astray. They have dared to teach Christians that the Holy Spirit will never speak of His own person or position, as though the third Person of the Godhead may be ignored and His ministry downgraded! Jesus said, "[When He comes] He shall not speak of himself, but whatever He will hear, He will speak" (John 16:13b). Jesus was actually telling His disciples: The Comforter will not come to stand on His own, to speak on His own authority. He will guide you into all truth-He will speak and act on the authority of the divine Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you do not yield and honor the Holy Spirit, your lives will not show forth the blessed fruits of the Spirit!

An Imperishable Crown: by Henry Blackaby

 

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. 1 Corinthians 9:24-25

Athletes are willing to push themselves harder and longer and farther than anyone else. They strive to bring their bodies and minds completely under control so that they excel and receive a prize. Others go home to relax, but athletes continue to train. While most people protect themselves from any form of discomfort, athletes push themselves to the limits of their endurance. While some remain satisfied with mediocre performance, athletes pay any price for excellence. Paul said that despite their most valiant efforts, the athletes’ successes and prizes are eventually forgotten. Even the greatest athletic achievements have not affected eternity.

If an athlete can be motivated to make incredible sacrifices for a perishable reward, how much more ought Christians to strive for an imperishable one? If an athlete will labor day after day in order to receive glory from others, how much harder ought Christians to work for the “well done” of their Master? Are you striving to bring your body into subjection for the glory of God? Are you training your mind to think the thoughts of God rather than thoughts of the world? Are you disciplining your life in prayer? When others are sleeping, are you interceding? Have you studied God’s word so diligently that you are prepared to find answers to the challenges you face? Have you equipped yourself in evangelism so that you are ready to share your faith? Have you prepared yourself as a Christian in order to qualify for the imperishable crown that awaits you?

IDOLS Starve Our Imagination: by Oswald Chambers

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. — Isaiah 40:26

In Isaiah’s day, God’s people had starved their imaginations by looking on the faces of idols. Isaiah told them to look to God, to the author of everything created and imagined. He made them lift their eyes to the heavens, so that they might begin to use their imaginations aright.

Nature to a child of God is sacramental. In every wind that blows, in every night and every day, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us, if we will only use our starved imaginations to realize it. If we learn to associate ideas worthy of God with all that happens in nature—with the sunrises and the sunsets, with the moon and the stars, with the changing seasons—our imaginations will never be at the mercy of our impulses but will always be at his service.

Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your experiences of salvation and sanctification? If your imagination is God-starved, you will have no power when difficulties arise. When you need strength, don’t look to your own experience or understanding; it is God you need. Go out of yourself—away from your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Take Isaiah’s words to heart: lift your eyes to the heavens and deliberately turn your mind to God.

Absolutely No Remembrance: by Charles Spurgeon

And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Hebrews 10:17

According to this gracious covenant the Lord treats His people as if they had never sinned. Practically, He forgets all their trespasses. Sins of all kinds He treats as if they had never been; as if they were quite erased from His memory. O miracle of grace! God here does that which in certain aspects is impossible to Him. His mercy works miracles which far transcend all other miracles.

Our God ignores our sin now that the sacrifice of Jesus has ratified the covenant. We may rejoice in Him without fear that He will be provoked to anger against us because of our iniquities. See! He puts us among the children; He accepts us as righteous; He takes delight in us as if we were perfectly holy. He even puts us into places of trust; makes us guardians of His honor, trustees of the crown jewels, stewards of the gospel. He counts us worthy, and gives us a ministry; this is the highest and most special proof that He does not remember our sins. Even when we forgive an enemy, we are very slow to trust him; we judge it to be imprudent so to do. But the Lord forgets our sins, and treats us as if we had never erred. O my soul, what a promise is this! Believe it and be happy.

Dueling Laws: by TA Sparks

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2

Let any of our old man, whether of our old temper, our old way of judging, our old disposition, any of it come up at all, if we are children of God, we know quite well that at that point a barrier is set up and we cannot get past, we are held up in our spiritual life and we have to go back and have that thing cleared up. It is as real as any other thing in the universe to us. At that moment we stand still spiritually, and the flaming sword is across our path. There is no way for that here. Bring that here and you will be judged. You will meet the judgment of God. You will be broken. It is coming up against the fact that God finished with all that long ago and we have to accept God’s standpoint. When we have accepted it then the thing works out, it continually works out. We take that position, we accept the truth.

We cannot bring an actual end to the old creation ourselves, but we say in a positive way: "I reckon as God reckons." Well then we shall find as we go on that God, having put all that under death, death rests upon it and if ever it shows its head again, the sentence of death is met. If we begin to work for the Lord with our own natural strength we meet death and before long our natural strength will come under death. If we begin to use our natural judgment in the things of God we shall meet an arrest and before long we shall come to a deadlock, unable to get through. Anything which we bring of nature into the things of God will bring us up against – not some new issue, but the old issue – death which was made to rest upon the old creation. In so far as we move in the newness of Life, work by the Spirit of God, and walk after the Spirit, death is done away and we are in Life and we can go on and can get through, no matter how much there may be of handicap and weakness in nature, we can get through as we go on in the Spirit. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death." We are free!

Care Of Our Feet: by Charles Spurgeon

"He will keep the feet of his saints." I Sam. 2:9

The way is slippery, and our feet are feeble, but the Lord will keep our feet. If we give ourselves up by obedient faith to be His holy ones, He will Himself be our guardian. Not only will He charge His angels to keep us, but He Himself will preserve our goings.

He will keep our feet from falling, so that we do not defile our garments, wound our souls, and cause the enemy to blaspheme.

He will keep our feet from wandering, so that we do not go into paths of error, or ways of folly, or courses of the world's custom.

He will keep our feet from swelling through weariness, or blistering because of the roughness and length of the way.

He will keep our feet from wounding: our shoes shall be iron and brass, so that even though we tread on the edge of the sword, or on deadly serpents, we shall not bleed, or be poisoned.

He will also pluck our feet out of the net. We shall not be entangled by the deceit of our malicious and crafty foes.

With such a promise as this, let us run without weariness, and walk without fear. He who keeps our feet will do it effectually.

Psalm 18:33 

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights.

Strongholds: by Henry Blackaby

“And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.” But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this? Therefore I also said, “I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”  Judges 2:2-3

God gave the Israelites specific instructions: Drive the Canaanites out of every corner of the land, and obliterate any vestige of their abominable idol worship. This assignment was challenging! Their enemies had formidable chariots. The Canaanites had seemingly impregnable fortresses that were dangerous and difficult to overcome. The Israelites failed to drive all the Canaanites from the land. Much about the Canaanite lifestyle and religion appealed to the Israelites’ sinful nature. Rather than destroying them and their idolatry, Israel compromised. The Canaanites would prove to be a troublesome distraction to the Israelites. Their idol worship would present a constant temptation.

When you became a Christian, God declared war on sin’s strongholds in your life. Sinful behaviors and attitudes were firmly entrenched in your character, but God commanded you to tear them down. The Holy Spirit pointed out areas of your life that were resistant to God’s will. Were you tempted to merely establish a truce rather than obliterating every sin? Is anger one of sin’s strongholds? If so, it will rise up against you in moments of weakness. Is there a stronghold of lust in your life? If so, you will succumb to it when caught off guard. In careless moments, these strongholds will still tempt you to continue your past sinful behaviors.

Do not underestimate the destructive power of sin. If there are strongholds in your life that you have never defeated, the Holy Spirit is still prepared to bring you complete victory.

Words of LIFE: by TA Sparks

The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are Life. John 6:63

This Life is a very vast Life. It reaches into God's great purpose, and we are a part of it; we are "the called according to His purpose." We want to know the purpose; we want to know our place in the purpose; we want to know our faculties, our functions. How shall this be? Not by studying up what they are, but by being in Life. It may be very interesting to have a scientific knowledge of the workings of our human bodies, but it is not necessary in order to live. Live, and the thing happens. You never have to consider whether you will take your next breath, to sit down and make a mental problem of it. You do it, and everything else is bound up with it, and follows in proper order. Breathing properly has a great deal bound up with it. Well then, live and everything else will follow. That is only saying, in other words: move, have your life in the Holy Spirit, and all the plan and order of God will follow. You are bound to come into it, you cannot help yourself.

Thus the object is to get the Lord's people to a place where they walk with the Lord, and are so open to Him that they are prepared for all that walking with Him means. Sometimes it will mean that they will have to leave a great deal that is of a secondary character; perhaps forsake many things, even religious things, the accepted things, to walk with the Lord. There may be a price attached to it; misunderstanding, and loneliness, and much besides; but if you are so open to the Lord that nothing else matters, and you mean to walk with God whatever the cost, no matter what people say you ought to do as (in their thought) a part of a great Christian order or religious machine, you will come into all God's secret thought as naturally as a flower opens to the sun, and you will be making discoveries and finding that there is a vast realm of meaning and possibility and capacity and power that you never dreamed of. The Lord is not going to stretch it out before us, and show us it. We shall discover it as we walk in the Spirit.

Seek Him First: by Sarah Young

Psalm 42:1–2

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

Colossians 1:16–17

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

I AM BEFORE ALL THINGS, and in Me all things hold together. I have always been and will always be. All things were created by Me: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. I am Lord over creation, over the church, over everything! Worship Me as your vibrant Lord, the living God. I want My loved ones to thirst for Me—as the deer pants for streams of water.

Do not be satisfied with only thinking about Me or knowing Me intellectually. Thirst for experiential knowledge of Me, grounded in sound biblical truth. Seek to know My Love that far surpasses mere knowledge. You will need the help of My Spirit to accomplish this.

You must be strengthened with mighty Power by the Holy Spirit, who indwells your innermost being and personality. Invite Him to empower and guide you in this amorous adventure. But remember that I am the goal of your searching—make Me central in your quest. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart!

Scripture

Ephesians 3:16–19

that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Jeremiah 29:13

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

Not of This World: by Andrew Murray

“And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not. They are not part of this world any more than I am.” John 17:14, 16

In His last night Jesus took pains to make clear to His disciples the impassible gulf between Him and the world and also between them and the world (John 16:16-21).  He had said of the Spirit: “The world at large cannot receive Him, because it isn’t looking for Him and doesn’t recognize Him.” (John 14:17).  “The world would love you if you belonged to it, but you don’t. I chose you to come out of the world, and so it hates you.” (John 15:19)

One great mark of the disciples was to be as little a part of the world as Christ was.  Christ and the disciples had become united in the cross and the Resurrection; they both belonged to another world, the kingdom of heaven.

WHY IS IT THAT FAITH IN THE HOLY SPIRIT IS PRACTICED SO LITTLE BY CHRISTIANS?

The world rules too much in the lives of Christians.  The “world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in possessions” (1 John 2:16) – all this robs the heart of its desire  for that true self-denial necessary for receiving the Holy Spirit.

We Are Free: by TA Sparks

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:2

Let any of our old man, whether of our old temper, our old way of judging, our old disposition, any of it come up at all, if we are children of God, we know quite well that at that point a barrier is set up and we cannot get past, we are held up in our spiritual life and we have to go back and have that thing cleared up. It is as real as any other thing in the universe to us. At that moment we stand still spiritually, and the flaming sword is across our path. There is no way for that here. Bring that here and you will be judged. You will meet the judgment of God. You will be broken. It is coming up against the fact that God finished with all that long ago and we have to accept God’s standpoint. When we have accepted it then the thing works out, it continually works out. We take that position, we accept the truth.

We cannot bring an actual end to the old creation ourselves, but we say in a positive way: "I reckon as God reckons." Well then we shall find as we go on that God, having put all that under death, death rests upon it and if ever it shows its head again, the sentence of death is met. If we begin to work for the Lord with our own natural strength we meet death and before long our natural strength will come under death. If we begin to use our natural judgment in the things of God we shall meet an arrest and before long we shall come to a deadlock, unable to get through. Anything which we bring of nature into the things of God will bring us up against – not some new issue, but the old issue – death which was made to rest upon the old creation. In so far as we move in the newness of Life, work by the Spirit of God, and walk after the Spirit, death is done away and we are in Life and we can go on and can get through, no matter how much there may be of handicap and weakness in nature, we can get through as we go on in the Spirit. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death." We are free!

God's Will: "Obey!" By A. W. Tozer

1 Samuel 12:18 Then Samuel called on the Lord, and that same day the Lord sent thunder and rain. So all the people stood in awe of the Lord and of Samuel.

Independence is a strong human trait, so men and women everywhere bristle when anyone says, "You owe obedience!" In the natural sense, we do not take  kindly to the prospect of yielding obedience to anyone.
Both Old and New Testaments of the Bible make it plain that sin is disobedience to the Law of God.  Paul's picture of sinners in Ephesians concludes that the wrath of God will come upon those who are "the children of disobedience."
So, we live in a generation of men and women alienated from God, and who make a great case for individualism and "the right of self-determination."  The individual's strong statement is this: "I belong to myself.  No one has the authority to require my obedience!"
Now, if God had made us to be mere machines, we would not have the power of self-determination.  He made us in His image, to be moral creatures with the power, but not the right, to choose evil.  We have the right to be good.
We never have the right to be bad because God, the Creator, is good.  If we choose to be unholy, we are using a right that is not ours!

Freedom in Christ is at the Root & Fabric of American Freedom

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

The very freedom we enjoy this July 4th is rooted in the Gospel.  This is not to say that all founders were believers, but to read their writings, even of the Deists (Jefferson, Franklin) God’s Word is liberally quoted.

When as a nation we try to export the American experiment of Freedom, we miss the underlying worldview of what we were founded on, and fail to see the worldview of the countries we wish to export to are in contradiction to the teachings of God’s Word, the Gospel and the concept of Freedom.

We further fail to treat our foundations as valuable and easily discard them while enjoying the good fruit it has brought us.

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" Psalm 11:3

So what are we to do?  How should we celebrate this July 4th?

“God shed His Grace on thee”

"We must not forget that our human rights are derived from the Christian faith. In Christian terms, every single human being whoever he or she may be, sick or well, clever or foolish, beautiful or ugly, every human being is loved by his Creator, who as the Gospel tells us, counted the hairs of his head." Malcolm Muggeridge

The Scriptures are filled with the idea of Freedom and Liberty… Live Free in Christ.

Liberty cultivates relationship and love between Christians

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. Galatians 5:13

Genuine Christian liberty is practiced in an atmosphere of service and motivated by love. 

the other man's conscience, I mean, not yours. For why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? 1 Corinthians 10:29

Liberty frees us from the curse of the law

The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." Galatians 3:12-13

Liberty frees us from the fear of death

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--  and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15

Liberty frees us from the bondage of other men

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 1 Corinthians 9:19

Liberty frees us from corruption

that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Romans 8:21

“ It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible.”  President George Washington

July 4th What a Wonderful Day of Freedom!

Jesus Christ What a Wonderful Eternity in Freedom!!

Slaves of Righteousness: by Henry Blackaby

And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.      Romans 6:18

Before you were a Christian you were a slave, in bondage to sin. Even when you did not want to sin, you were unable to do otherwise (Rom. 7:15-24). When God saved you, He freed you from sin, but you remained a slave. Now, rather than being bound to sin, you are bound to righteousness. In every area of your life you are obligated to do what honors God.

There are some who believe that when Christ sets them free, they are free to do whatever they want. That is not so. The apostle Paul realized that when he began following Christ he became a “bondservant” of Christ, and his life was no longer his own (Rom. 1:1). Now, rather than being enslaved to sin, he was enslaved to God and His righteousness. When people mistreated him, he had forfeited the right to respond from his natural feelings but was compelled to offer a righteous response. When he was tempted, he was no longer free to succumb to his feelings. Paul could not enter the workplace and act selfishly. He understood that, as a slave of righteousness, he was obligated to live a holy life, honoring his Master.

Righteous living is not an option for a Christian. Nor is it something we must try to do over time. It is an obligation, mandatory for every child of God. Our freedom in Christ is not freedom to do what we want. It is freedom to live righteously, something we could not do when we were in bondage to sin. Now that we are free to live righteously, we must allow the Holy Spirit to produce in us a holy, sanctified life (1 John 3:7).