Waiting & Anticipating: by Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Isaiah 40:31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

   Waiting on Me means directing your attention to Me in hopeful anticipation of what I will do. It entails trusting Me with every fiber of your being, instead of trying to figure things out yourself. Waiting on Me is the way I designed you to live: all day, every day. I created you to stay conscious of Me as you go about your daily duties.
    I have promised many blessings to those who wait on Me: renewed strength, living above one's circumstances, resurgence of hope, awareness of My continual Presence. Waiting on Me enables you to glorify Me by living in deep dependence on Me, ready to do My will. It also helps you to enjoy Me; in My Presence is fullness of Joy.   

Lamentations 3:24-26 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Blessed Matter: by CS Lewis

Colossians 1:26–27 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you,  the hope of glory.

And let me make it quite clear when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being 'in Christ' or of Christ being 'in them', this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution—a biological or superbiological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

A Revival’s Overwhelming: by Martyn Lloyd Jones

That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever. Joshua 4:24

A revival is something that, when it happens, leads people to say, as the townspeople said in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, “What is this? What is it?” It is something that comes like a tornado. It is almost like an overflowing tide; it is like a flood.

Astounding things happen, and of such a magnitude that men are left amazed, astonished. Let me give you an illustration that is one of the most lyrical and one of the most wonderful. There was a preacher in Scotland three hundred years ago by the name of John Livingstone of Kilsyth. John Livingstone and a number of others had been spending Sunday night after the services in prayer. Monday morning came, and John Livingstone had been asked to preach. He was out in the fields meditating, and suddenly he felt that he could not preach, that the thing was beyond him and that he was inadequate. And he felt like running away. But suddenly the voice of God seemed to speak to him, not in audible language, but in his spirit, telling him not to do that and that God did not work in that way, and it made him feel that he must go back. He preached, he tells us, on Ezekiel 36. And he said, “I preached for about an hour and a half. Then,” he said, “I began to apply my message,” and as he was beginning to apply it, suddenly the Spirit of God came upon him, and he went on for another hour in this application. And as he did so, people were literally falling to the ground, and in that one service five hundred people were converted. That is the kind of thing that happens in a revival. And poor John Livingstone says that kind of thing only happened to him on one other occasion.

When God Speaks, It Is So: by Henry Blackaby

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.  Isaiah 55:11

When God speaks, nothing remains the same. At the beginning of time, God spoke, and a universe was created out of nothing. God followed a pattern when He created the earth: He spoke; it was so; it was good (Gen. 1:3-4). This pattern continued throughout the Bible. Whenever God revealed His plans, things happened just as He said, and God considered the result “good” (Phil. 2:13). God doesn’t make suggestions. He speaks with the full determination to see that what He has said will come to fruition.

Whenever Jesus spoke, what He said came to pass. Lepers found that a word from Jesus meant healing (Luke 5:13; 17:14). The blind man discovered that a word from Jesus meant sight (Luke 18:42). Through a barren fig tree the disciples saw that a curse from Jesus meant destruction (Mark 11:20). The sinner experienced forgiveness through a word from Jesus (John 8:11). How many attempts did it take Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead? Only one (John 11:43). There was never a time that Jesus spoke that what He said did not happen.

What happens when Jesus speaks to you? Have you been reading the words of Jesus in your Bible without experiencing His word that transforms everything around you? Jesus condemned the Pharisees because they assumed that knowledge of the written Scriptures would give them life. They were satisfied with having the words instead of experiencing the person who spoke the words (John 5:39). How powerful a word from God is to your life! As you read your Bible and pray, listen to what God has to say to you about His will for your life.

The Christian Message: Prophetic, Not Diplomatic: by AW Tozer

For Christ sent me… to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should he made of none effect. 1 Corinthians 1:17

We who witness and proclaim the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world.

We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, modern education, or the world of sports.

We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum!

God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Whoever would possess it must pass under the rod. He must repudiate himself and concur in God’s just sentence against him.

What does this mean to the individual, the condemned man who would find life in Christ Jesus? How can this theology be translated into life?

Simply, he must repent and believe. He must forsake his sins and then go on to forsake himself.

Let him cover nothing, defend nothing, excuse nothing.

Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let him bow his head before the stroke of God’s stern displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy to die.

Having done this, let him gaze with simple trust upon the risen Saviour, and from Him will come life and rebirth and cleansing and power. The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now raises him to a new life along with Christ!

A Matter of LIFE: by TA Sparks

You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Christ is your life. When He appears, then you, too, will appear with Him in glory. Colossians 3:3,4

We are very often inclined to think that the Life of the Lord in us needs in some way to be improved, to be added to, when really what is required is that we should discover what we have, and, discovering it by experience, live according to it. This Life is not something apart from the Lord Jesus, and we can never think of His standing in need of some improvement, nor of the possibility of something being added to Him to make Him complete, or more complete. We would never think like that. And this Life is one with Himself. As the Apostle says, it is Christ who is our Life, and our need is to discover what Christ is in us, and to live accordingly. So in a very real sense it is a matter of the Life getting more of us, rather than of our getting more of the Life. That, at any rate, is the way of its working.

This, in the ordering of God, has to be done in a world where death still rules and works; for in this world the destruction of death has not yet been made manifest. Death, like the devil, goes on, although Calvary still remains full victory. We are left in this world, and it is in this world where death reigns and works as a great energy that we, by this sovereign ordering of God, have to come to prove the values of the Life which has been deposited in us, and to discover its potentialities. This is an experimental discovery. It therefore resolves itself into battle between that which is in this world and the Life which is in the believer. It is the battle for Life, not as to the forfeiture of that Life – not as to whether death can take eternal Life away from us, for that is not the question at issue – but as to the triumphant expression and the full manifestation of the power of that Life. That is the issue.

Obedience: by Andrew Murray

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, John 14:15-16

We have learned to know the disciples in their preparation for the baptism of the Spirit, and we have seen what was needed for their continuing "with one accord" (Acts 1:14) in prayer for the power of the Spirit. Christ was everything to them. Even before the cross, He was literally their life, their one thought, their only desire. But He was much more so after the cross, and with the resurrection.

Was such devotion to Christ something particular to the disciples, not to be expected of everyone? Or was it indeed something that the Lord asked from all who desired to be filled with the Spirit?  God expects it of all His children. The Lord needs such individuals now, as much as He did then, to receive His Spirit and His power, to show them forth here on earth, and, as intercessors, to link the world to the throne of God.

Is Christ nothing, something, or everything to us? For the unconverted, Christ is nothing. For the half-converted, the average Christian, Christ is something. But for the true Christian, Christ is everything. Each one who prays for the power of the Spirit must be ready to say, "Today I yield myself with mv whole heart to the leading of the Spirit.” A full surrender is the question of life or death, an absolute necessity.

My brother or sister in Christ, you have read the words of John 14:15: "If you love me, keep my commandments."  The surrender to live every day, all day long, abiding in Christ and keeping His commandments, is to be the one sign of your discipleship. Only when the heart longs in everything to do God's will can the Father's love and Spirit rest upon the child of God. This was the disposition in which the disciples continued with one accord in prayer, and this will be the secret of power in our intercession as we plead for the church and the world.