JESUS MADE REAL He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you. John 16:14. We do not make Jesus real by conjuring up a mental picture of Him long ago in Galilee and trying to walk in imagination with Him there. We do not have to go back two thousand years or travel to Palestine to find Jesus. There is a fad for that sort of thing, but so might one inwardly visualize any character of history. Such mental association may, indeed, affect one’s life to some read more...

TAKE HIS WORD FOR IT Let God be true, but every man a liar. Romans 3:4 “Abraham believed God.” The essence of faith is simply taking God at His Word. “What more can he say than to you he hath said?” “He hath said…so that we may boldly say.” We are thrown back upon revelation, not reason. God has spoken and holy men recorded it. Back of everything stands the record. If we are to believe the Living Word we must accept the Written Word. Jesus accepted the Old Testament as the Word of God. read more...

TALK AND WALK Are ye not carnal, and walk as men. I Corinthians 3:3 He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. I John 2:6 Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Galatians 5:16 We are too much inclined to excuse strife and schism in our churches by saying, “Too err is human; no church is perfect.” God has made provision for victory over the flesh, in both the individual and the collective life of His people. We may read more...

CARMEL AND HOREB Then the fire of the Lord fell… I Kings 18:38 But the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. I Kings 19:12 God was in the fire at Carmel; He was not in the fire at Horeb. We are not to gather from the still, small voice that God is never in wind, earthquake, and fire. He often is. He came at Pentecost with a sound as of a rushing mighty wind. He came in an earthquake in the Philippian jail. God works in nature in the cataclysmic, in flood read more...

STEPPING IN THE LIGHT As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. Colossians 2:6 God would not have us merely “take a stand,” He would have us walk. Too many have taken a stand and are still standing; for years they have made no progress. The New Testament makes much of our walk. We walk by faith, not by sight. We are to walk in the light, walk in love, walk in newness of life, walk worthy of our vocation, walk circumspectly, walk worthy of the Lord, walk read more...

BACKSIDE OF THE DESERT And he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God. Exodus 3:1 Consider again where Moses met God at the end of his forty-year postgraduate course in Midian. In the unlikeliest place and at the unlikeliest time God brings us to the Great Moment. Moses, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, brought up in the courts of Egypt, had known more glamorous days than now, a shepherd in a desert. But the big day and the hallowed spot, however read more...

This whole matter of Christian living is simply one issue: believing God. -Vance Havner-

Overcome Distractions But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. —Matthew 6:6 Among the enemies to devotion none is so harmful as distractions. Whatever excites the curiosity, scatters the thoughts, disquiets the heart, absorbs the interests or shifts our life focus from the kingdom of God within us to the world around us—that is a distraction; read more...

Worth of a Soul: God Gave His Only Son ...Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:26 In the world's markets, something which has no value for a disinterested person may be considered of great value to another who desires it and purchases it. In this sense, we may learn how dear and precious we are to Christ by what He was willing to give for us! Many Christians are tempted to downgrade themselves too much. I am not arguing against true humility and my word to you is read more...