SermonIndex Audio Sermons
SermonIndex - Promoting Revival to this Generation
Give To SermonIndex
Discussion Forum : Devotional Thoughts : Steadfast

Print Thread (PDF)

PosterThread









 Steadfast

Ephesians 6:10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The Lord does not put us in glass houses to grow us, to be His trees; the Lord does not protect us from the storms, the adversities; He exposes us to the bitter winds and the scorching suns of adversity and trial. The Lord is working in us that which is according to His own Nature – eternity, the enduring, the everlasting God – that which will not be easily or hardly carried away.

He is putting substance in you. Oh, today we fear that the appeal to become Christians is so often in terms of having an easy or a good time; being happy and enjoying yourself; well, thank God for ALL divine joy, but this is true to the House, to the City, that the first thing the Lord is working toward and seeking to work into His people is that substantial, steadfast, enduring faithfulness that is according to His own nature. Substantial! Oh for substantial Christians that don’t need coddling and nursing and running after all the time; being pandered to to get them to go on or stand up. Men and women like cedars of Lebanon; like the hewn stones – weighty, accountable, and responsible to carry weight – and all that is meant by strength.

I can only remind you again of what a large place that has in the Word of God: be strong, be strong in the Lord in the strength of His might, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Think again. Want to understand why the winds are allowed to blow so fiercely... the storms? To get us away from that natural, easy-going-ness or cheapness, lightness, frivolousness and to make us people of weight. Strength – through testing, through adversity – strength... to endure throughout all ages. There is much which is going to be carried away in the last great testing, and if, therefore, trial and adversity is the only way to deepen us, to put caliber into us, I suppose we must expect more of it as the time shortens.


By T. Austin-Sparks from: Aspects of the City

 2017/5/30 12:14









 Re: Steadfast

Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
John 15:2

“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The beloved child is chastised and the fruitful branch is pruned. Many a troubled soul in an hour of distress has fancied itself the object of God’s displeasure. But it is the fruitful branch that feels the knife. The unfruitful branch is taken away and burned. Many a saint in adversity has feared that he is perhaps a stranger to grace, forgetting that it is the bastards, not sons, who escape the Father’s discipline.

There is a purpose in the pruning, “that it may bring forth more fruit.” Not the feverish stepped-up production of this machine age but the natural, spontaneous fruitfulness of the branch that draws its life from the vine. Too much of our religious productivity is ground out by the methods of this age. The true Christian abides and abounds, and to him the Father-Husbandman’s pruning is part of he process.

By Vance Havner

 2017/5/30 13:45









 Re: Steadfast

Just one more devotion .....many here are going through some very tough trials and testings, be encouraged....the Lord is our strength!

Lord, I will follow You, but... —Luke 9:61


Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, “Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about…?” Or we say, “Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark.”
Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession.

 2017/5/30 14:24





©2002-2024 SermonIndex.net
Promoting Revival to this Generation.
Privacy Policy