Archive for the ‘External Articles’ Category

Mmmmmthe bed feels good this morning! Just a little while longer. I snuggle in, wrap my arms around my husband and send my strongest, most persuasive vibe. Let’s stay here awhile.

“Come on sweetheart, time to get up and get ready for church.” ,he whispers gently but firm. As he tosses his legs over the side of the bed,

**two copper pennies drop into the plate.

Is that man still in the bathroom? Why is it that he has to string out his grooming process? Take a shower, watch T.V., shave, eat breakfast, and last but not least brush his teeth. Grrrr.

“Hon, it’s 9:30 am. Remember, I need the bathroom, too”

“As soon as I brush my teeth, it’s all yours.”

I smile patiently. Same story every week

**and two copper pennies drop into the plate.

Well dressed including their smiles,the ladies with beauty shop perfect gray hair stand at the church door greeting each person warmly as they arrive. They recognize us as newcomers.
“We’re so glad you’re here.” They say as they hand me a little white gift bag. “Are you from around here?”-simple getting to know you questions and genuine interest in our answers. We feel at home

**as two plus two copper pennies drop into the plate.

Entering the sanctuary, we look around at the pews filled with mostly ordinary people. In the back of the church, a couple of members sit in wheel chairs. In front of us, a little white-haired lady with a prayer cap sits quietly. As the service gets underway, announcements are made and songs are lifted. A blonde-haired woman takes the arm of the lady with the prayer cap. They walk to the front of the church.
Oh, she’s blind

She takes her place in front of the microphone and in a strong voice says, “I first heard this song about washing each other’s feet several years ago. It is my hope that you will be encouraged by it and come tonight for our Love feast and Communion service.” And then, she sings acappella not in a recording artist voice but clear and sweet. As she returns to her seat,

**four copper pennies drop into the plate.

One by one each person brings their pennies and a melodious sound of copper bells ring out in the heavenly courts, sweet, sweet worship to the King.

Mark 13:42 Then a poor widow came and dropped in two pennies. NLT
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Darlene Hight

Darlene is a writer who travels with her husband, Mark across rural United States as he builds power plants.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

Gen 4:26 “…At that time, men began calling on the name of the Lord.”

Outside my office hangs a clock on the wall that’s been slow for weeks, maybe months now, but who’s counting? Before yesterday, the last time I noticed, it was about ten minutes slow. For a while (weeks or months) its sluggishness didn’t bother me. Yesterday, I recognized that it had now lost three hours. Suddenly, like a lightning bolt, “bother” struck me. I walked back to my office, poked around in my desk, found two AA batteries, and fixed it.

It took three minutes. Three, sixty second segments to recover three hours!

It’s 12 months, 365 days, 8,760 hours later than this time last year.

Welcome to 2010.

What did you do with your time in 2009?

It’s funny, the things we say about time. We declare that time can be lost, wasted, spent, and of all things, fly. Some of us talk about killing time. But I think it’s really as Dion Boucicault says, “time quietly passes and kills us.”

The first chapters in the book of Genesis are mysterious. Historians find it difficult to pinpoint time in the first chapters of the Bible. We can’t date or figure out exactly when or how much time passed in the events from creation and throughout Adam and Eve’s family lineage. Adam, himself, lived 930 years. Adam’s youngest son lived 912 years, and farther down the line, Noah had his sons after he was 500 years old. A young, strapping dad, he was!

The history of beginnings reveals a troubled lot. But it was times of trouble that changed people and turned them back to their Creator. Adam and Eve’s great fall, then their son, Cain, murdering his brother, Able, marked turning points in history. Trouble initiated something they, obviously, had not done in years. After so much trouble, they began to seek the Lord.

After all the mess-ups and foul-ups, the writer takes notice, “At that time,” the time of one failure after another, the time of trouble, “men began calling on the name of the Lord.”

We step into this year, wiping sweat from our brow, barely escaping a death blow to the world economy. With job losses, some people suffered a fatal blow to their personal finances, losing houses, cars, and credit ratings. Others suffered more personal and tragic loses last year. Deaths, divorces, broken relationships and shattered dreams abounded.

What now?

What happens now isyou get a mulligan, a do-over. Here’s the question: What will we do with our do-over? Hopefully, we’ll learn from our ancestors, and after all our trouble, we, too, will “begin to call on the name of the Lord.”

It’s noteworthy that after men began to seek the Lord, He called Noah to build an ark of salvation for his family to escape the coming rain storm. Prayer didn’t stop the storm, but created a way through it for those who would listen to Noah’s warnings. Sadly, not all listened, most didn’t in fact. Only Noah’s family was saved.

It’s 2010 already! Don’t you think it’s time? With everything we’ve been through and all the battles we fought last year, isn’t it time we begin to seek the Lord?

A new set of AA’s will not recover the time we’ve lost, but the Lord is offering grace for us to start over today. This is a New Year, a new day. If you will begin to seek the Lord you will discover, over time, that God will make a way where there was no way. Prayer doesn’t always stop the coming storms, but it does make a way through them.

In the history of humankind, the days we live in are like none of the others before us. Indeed, this is a different day. This is not a time to attempt to journey into the future without a relationship with the only One who knows what lies ahead.

It’s 2010and it’s time.

It’s time to begin calling on the name of the Lord.

Bill Baldwin is an author, speaker, and pastor. He resides with his wife, Karen, daughter, Karly, and two dogs, Rosie and Gracie, near Charlotte, North Carolina. Visit www.billbaldwin.org

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

By: Melinda Bellamy

Faith is one of the fundamental elements of our Christian lives. It is by faith that we are saved, justified, and cleansed. Faith is how we please God, admit our reliance on Him, and incessantly rely on His grace and mercy.

Faith helps us to evaluate the present through the light of eternity by giving us the courage to trust. Faith does not free us from living in the world. It does not exempt us from the trials or tribulations of the world, but it does bring a realization that there is more to life than earthly matters. When we have sound conviction about the spiritual world, then we began to develop a perspective that would allow us to begin enjoying eternal life with God right now.

Every time we display faith in God, we are fulfilling our side of the covenant. God has already promised us many things such as healing, answers to prayer, receiving blessings, deliverance in a trial, etc., but it is our duty to contend for the promise – doing our part by trusting that God will keep His word. What does this mean? It means using our faith to claim a specific promise God made to us – staking our claim on the promise regardless of circumstances around us – perseverance.

However, no promise of God can be claimed unless we know what the promises of God are, which is why it is important to find out what God says about a situation before making a judgment. The easiest way to do that is to open the bible and read it. Now that is a pretty simple thing to do but many christians do not do it enough. Instead, we react first and then later think ‘oops, I should have consulted God on that one.’ This is not the way to lead a successful Christian life. Always consult God first!

When we use our faith by claiming good promises God already has in store for us, we can come up with a powerful and positive vision for our lives. We do not have to settle for what our lives have become. God wants us, to use our faith, to enjoy all the good things that he has just for us.

It will not be easy though, when we begin to claim the promises of God for ourselves, situations and circumstances arise to the contrary of what we believe God for. This is where the battle of wills begins. Whose report will we believe? Are we going to be consistent in our faith and trust in God’s word no matter what?

Or will we fall prey to the destructive nature of the world around us and believe in our mitigating circumstances? These are the questions that, when answered, will determine what our destiny will be – success or failure. Many readers may be thinking ‘Wow this all sounds so serious.’ It is!

When our faith is strong, it can withstand all the heated situations and every type of fiery dart thrown by the enemy. Then, how do we remain a person of the faith when everything surrounding us exudes doubt and unbelief. Let’s face it; we live in a world full of broken promises and negativity – to put it mildly. This doubt and unbelief seeps into our consciousness day in and day out and is often even projected through some of the people we are in close contact with daily. And then, after absorbing this poison all the time, it’s no wonder that it is easier to believe in the negative things and doubt good can even happen.

Yes, it is not easy, but we must stay strong in our faith and contend for the promises of God. It is what faith is all about! Trust in God, not in man, not in circumstances, and most certainly not in the Devil! We can also influence others to want what we have if we show them by example. Plus, that’s not all, the more we exercise our faith, the more we increase the level of faith that we can use. In order to grow, we must do our faith exercises everyday on purpose. The following are some practical steps to take in order to whip that faith into get shape:

Dream big! – Write down the vision and make it plain.
Make the right confessions consistently and do not waver.
Find scriptures to support it and read them over and over.
Make steps toward the dream and keep your focus on achieving this dream.
Look for uncommon favor and expect God to make things happen!
Be patient and consistent – All good things will happen in God’s perfect timing.
Pray for strength to endure the journey to your destiny.

Always remember, faith is like a muscle, to get it to function properly, it must be exercised everyday!

Article Source: http://www.articles.narrowisthepath.com

Please visit my site www.faithwalkonline.com

I found this article today and had to post it! It’s so very true! I’m ashamed to say I can honestly see myself in this short article. It really makes me wonder why we would ever say something like this from a sense of defeat or helplessness! We’re going to God, the Creator of All Things afterall!

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I’ve heard it a thousand times. I’ve probably said it a thousand times myself. Someone bares their soul to me, and the situation is terrible, painful, difficult … far beyond the reach of anything I can do – or anyone can do – to help. And then those six words slip from my lips:

“All I can do is pray.”

Even as I write the words, I can hear the defeat resonating from them. Properly translated, what I far too often mean when I say those six words is, “I’m sorry I can’t do anything to help. I don’t have the resources you need. I wish I did. I’ll pray about it, but I know that’s just a drop in the bucket to what you really need. I don’t expect anything to really happen as a result of my prayers.”

Then one day as I said it, God rocked me back on my heels. I realized how much I was cheapening God by the attitude behind my words. Think about it:

“All I can do is pray. I’m sorry – all I can do is call upon the sovereign Lord of the Universe, the One who holds all resources, all grace, all power, all hope in his hands. All I can do is ask the loving God who sent his Son to die for us and then raised him from the dead to help you out. All I can do is ask God to demonstrate his divine character in your life through his unending providence, generosity, love, miracles, presence, and care. Sorry I can’t do more.”

It comes down to a question of attitude and a recognition of adequacy. As Paul writes in II Corinthians 3:5 “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming form ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.” Our attitude should be one of humility, recognizing that our adequacy to meet any need or act in any situation is from God alone.

Once we assume that attitude and understand that our adequacy comes from God, we will no longer despair when we are faced with situations that are beyond our control or help. We simply turn in the same humility to the God who is more than adequate to meet every need – and call upon him for deliverance.

With the right attitude and an understanding of where our resources always and only ever come from, we can truly reach out and say with confidence and trust, “I can’t help you. I wish I could, but I simply don’t have the resources you need. Fortunately, I know the One who does. All I can do is pray – but I know that God will take care of everything else.”

© 2009 Paula Marolewski

Article Source: http://www.articles.narrowisthepath.com

Pastor Knight provides a wonderful post about backsliding. I know, not everyone’s favorite topic by any stretch, but absolutely something that we need to be conscious of! He references Matthew Henry’s commentary and thoughts on this topic, and I must admit I had never seen it described quite like this.