(November 5, 2009)

Prayer House News!

Below is a picture from youth convention. Isn't it great to see our youth seeking God together.

FYI - Our mission board is so well run that there will be NO love offering taken this weekend for our guest missionaries. They budgeted a very healthy offering to give to them. Lately we have been taking a number of love offerings and I really appreciate the way you have responded. This convention will be the Missions Board's gift to you.
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Unshakable Kingdom

Abiding Fellowship

continued from yesterday

1 Peter 2:2 like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.

I want us to consider the milk and the meat of God's word. Many consider the milk of the Word to be the light stuff and the meat to be the deep stuff. I disagree with that. The Bible does talk about these different aspects of God's Word but I don't believe the difference between milk and meat has much to do with depth.

Milk is a food that has gone through the digestive system of something else before you receive it. Whereas, meat is a food that you must digest yourself. In that light, I cannot present to you meat, but rather milk. I can only present to you what I have digested no matter how deep or shallow it is. You cannot receive anything more than milk from me.

Hebrews said the difference between milk and meat is determined by the receiver, not by the Word itself. The only thing the babe can receive is milk. Meat is for the mature. So what is the difference between the babe and the mature? Reason of use.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. (14) But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

The reason they are mature is because of practice, or reason of use. Practice of what?

John 4:30‑34 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. (31) In the meanwhile the disciples were requesting Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." (32) But He said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." (33) The disciples therefore were saying to one another, "No one brought Him {anything} to eat, did he?" (34) Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.

Jesus said, "My food, or meat, is in doing the will of God." So here is how the Word of God becomes meat to us. When I bring a teaching from God's Word to you the most I can present to you is milk, that which I have digested. If it is going to become meat to you then you must do the Word of God. It must be lived out in your life.

Look at what James says about this.

James 1:22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. Be doers of the Word not hearers only. Hearers only deceive themselves. They think they are doing well while they are gradually dying. To have a diet of milk only - without the balance of meat, will ultimately kill us spiritually.

2 Timothy 3:7; "Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

Suppose you went to every prayer seminar you could attend. You learned everything there was to learn about prayer. You sat under the best teachers on the subject there are. But you never did pray. You never did spend any time in the presence of God.

Without the doing of what you have taken in you will forever live in a spiritual state of staleness, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is part of what's wrong with the church in America today. We hear the gospel from 100 different sources and do nothing about it. We have deceived ourselves into believing that hearing alone is healthy. James says, Don't be deceived, be doers, not hearers only.

That brings us right back to the issue of spiritual capacity or the ability to learn spiritually. The habitual exercise of the will of God is what increases our capacity. The doing of the Word of God increases our ability to grow spiritually. This is why we have people today that have grown up hearing the gospel, can quote one scripture verse after another, and never miss a church service and yet when something hits them hard they are shaken. They have not become a part of the unshakable kingdom Jesus talked about.

Let's go back to Sarah Smiley quote, "Many of the hidden truths of God's Word require more spiritual-intelligence than most Christians can bring to them. To apprehend them, requires a certain measure of spiritual capacity and habitual exercise in the things of God, which all do not possess for want of abiding fellowship with Jesus."

She says, “Most do not possess this spiritual capacity because they lack a desire for abiding fellowship with Jesus.” Our opening verses began by saying, "Don't refuse Him who is speaking." If we lack a desire for abiding fellowship with Jesus it's because we are refusing Him who is speaking. Jesus woos us. His spirit was sent as a drawing agent into an intimacy with Him. He wants us attached to Him.

continued tomorrow

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Medication: A Merry Heart

Strange Quotes:

"The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too." (Anton Chekhov)

"It's not the people who are in prison worry me. It's the people who aren't." (Arthur Gore)

"Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking." (Bill Vaughan) You can do it Barb!

"When you see what some women marry, you realise how they must hate to work for a living." (Helen Rowland)