Pray for the Leaders of Israel and the leaders of your country,
Israeli Government Leaders
1. Aiel Sharon – Prime Minister (Likud)
2. Ehud Olmert – Commerce and Industry, acting PM (Likud)
3. Shaul Mofaz – Defense (Likud)
4. Silvan Shalom – Foreign Affairs (Likud)
5. Benjamin Netanyahu – Finance (Likud)
6. Limor Livnat – Education, Culture, Sports (Likud)
7. Tzachy Hanegbi – Internal Security & Police (Likud)
8. Yosef (Tomy) Lapid – Justice (Shinui)
9. Efi Eitam – Housing and Construction(National Religious Party)
10.Avigdor Liberman – Transport (National Union)
11.Tzipi Livni – Immigration absorption (Likud)
12.Avraham Poraz – Interior and Communications (Shinui)
13.Danny Naveh – Health (Likud)
14.Yosef Paritzki – National Infrastructures (Shinui)
15.Zevulun Orlev – Welfare Services (NRP)
16.Israel Katz – Agriculture (Likud)
17.Benny Alon – Tourism (NU)
18.Yehudit Naot – Environment (Shinui)
19.Modi Zandberg – Science (Shinui)
20.Nathan Sharanski – Minister without portfolio (Likud)
21.Meir Sheetrit – Minister without portfolio (Likud)
22.Uzi Landau – Minister without portfolio (Likud)
Pray BIG !!!!! We serve an awesome God, one who is able to do more than we could ever think or imagine. Ask God to use you in a great way to further His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.
If the original disciples had not obeyed this verse you would not be a Christian today. If you do not obey this verse, who will end up with a Christless eternity. Please pray that all Christians would catch the vision laid out in the above verse and obey it. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ states the following:
How You Can Help Fulfill the Great Commission
A Global Strategy
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2. What is the Great Commission?
The Great Commission is our Lord's command take the gospel to every person throughout the world and to make disciples in all nations. It involves building and multiplying disciples in all nations so that they can, in turn, saturate their nations with the Good News and train other disciples to do the same generation after generation through the process of spiritual multiplication.
Christ did not commission us to Christianize all nations; He called us to disciple and evangelize them. Our responsibility is to preach and teach Christ's dynamic gospel; it is the Holy Spirit's responsibility to make our witness effective. With the responsibility, however, Christ also gave us everything necessary for success.
Go read the whole thing at “How You Can Help Fulfill the Great Commission”
This verse hit me a like a ton of bricks today. Many thoughts came to my mind about how sometimes I am not much different than the Pharisees searching the scriptures, trying to live Holy but being a sinful mess because I have not sought Jesus Christ. I need to be more like Mary and sit at His feet and listen and worship Him rather than like Martha busy with so many good things, but not the necessary thing. (Luke 10:38-42). Please understand me; I am saying we need to read the Word everyday; however we need to seek the One it is all about. We also need to pursue Holiness, just through the One that can make us Holy, not by our own methods.
In this famous passage of I Corinthians 13(the one often read at weddings) the first mention of what Love is, makes the point that it suffers long. Some translations start by saying Love is Patient, Love is Kind, the actual literal Greek translation is Love suffers long. Does suffering bring us closer to God? Why is it that the most loving Christians I have known were also ones that had suffered much in this life. Could they actually have gotten closer to God’s divine nature through their own suffering? Were they able to relate more to His suffering that He experienced and still experiences because of ours and mankind’s sins? Sometimes I find myself wondering why He has put up with my sins and mankinds history of wickedness. He then reminds me that He loves me and He is willing to suffer long, until we come to Him with a repentant heart filled with true Love that can only come from God.
The Holy Spirit is of vital importance to our spiritual well being. It is something that Christ gives us after we put our faith in Him(Ephesians 1:13). In our flesh we can grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) or we can be filled with Him like the Apostle Paul(Acts 13:9). Jesus said how much more would the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask(Luke 11:13). When the Holy Spirit came upon the early church they became bold witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (see Acts 1:8 and Acts 4:31)
The early church was full of the Holy Spirit, and it was evident by their zeal to share the gospel and they shared it with power. When there is a lack of witnessing with power, could we say that we have probably grieved the Holy Spirit? A.W. Tozer put it this way: "If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference." ?
God’s offer of the Word of Life, cost Him everything(death on a cross)however He gives it freely and it is everlasting. Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:13&14
If we are a Christian, God will one day take us home to be with Him, “where Holiness Dwells”. I have been very encouraged by my brothers and sisters who are living in physical poverty, but who have much spiritual wealth. There is sometimes a lack of hunger in America for spiritual things. In other countries such as Mexico, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, there is a growing spiritual hunger among the Christians. Please Pray for them to keep their first love and let them be an encouragement to those of us who have taken the cross for granted.
“What if reaching the world were completely up to you. How would you do it? Does the above verse still apply to Christians. I think it does. What do you think?
“Culturally understood, an antithesis is the watershed that divides two exact opposites. The issue of conflict is not particular, but universal - the two sides of an antithesis oppose each other at every point. You could use the military image of a never-ending front line. There is an eternal war raging between the adversaries, one which is total and unconditional. There is no quarter for the vanquished. Battle imagery, in fact, is crucial to any worldview, for it is in this metaphor that we find our antithesis - the very foundation of our world and life-view. Unless we adopt this metaphor of a true holy war into our worldview, any lasting victory will never be attained. We bring the message of peace; however, the Promised Land can only be entered after the spiritual Canaanites have been driven out.
“Notice first that in the picture in Romans 7:1-4 by which Paul illustrates our deliverance from the Law there is only one woman, while there are two husbands. The woman is in a very difficult position, for she can only be wife of one of the two, and unfortunately she is married to the less desirable one. Let us make no mistake, the man to whom she is married is a good man; but the trouble lies here, that the husband and wife are totally unsuited to one another. He is a most particular man, accurate to a degree; she on the other hand is decidedly easy-going. With him all is definite and precise; with her all is vague and haphazard. He wants everything just so, while she accepts things as they come. How could there be happiness in such a home?
And then that husband is so exacting! He is always making demands on his wife. And yet one cannot find fault with him, for as a husband he has a right to expect something of her; and besides, all his demands are perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with the man and nothing wrong with his demands; the trouble is that he has the wrong kind of wife to carry them out. The two cannot get on at all; theirs are utterly incompatible natures. Thus the poor woman is in great distress. She is fully aware that she often makes mistakes, but living with such a husband it seems as though everything she says and does is wrong! What hope is there for her? If only she were married to that other Man all would be well. He is no less exacting than her husband, but He also helps much. She would fain marry Him, but her husband is still alive. What can she do? She is "bound by law to the husband" and unless he dies she cannot legitimately marry that other Man.
This picture is not drawn by me but by the apostle Paul. The first husband is the Law; the second husband is Christ; and you are the woman. The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea more (Matt. 5:21-48) but what He requires from us He Himself carries out in us. The Law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but He Himself fulfills in us the very demands He makes. Little wonder that the woman desires to be freed from the first husband that she may marry that other Man! But her only hope of release is through the death of her first husband, and he holds on to life most tenaciously. Indeed there is not the least prospect of his passing away. "Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished (Matt. 5:18).”
“If we are `in Adam' all that is in Adam necessarily devolves upon us; it becomes ours involuntarily, for we have to do nothing to get it. There is no need to make up our minds to lose our temper or to commit some other sin; it comes to us freely and despite ourselves. In a similar way, if we are `in Christ' all that is in Christ comes to us by free grace, without effort on our part but on the ground of simple faith”
He also states “Grace means that God does something for me; law means that I do something for God. God has certain holy and righteous demands which He places upon me: that is law. Now if law means that God requires something of me for their fulfillment, then deliverance from law means that He no longer requires that from me, but Himself provides it. Law implies that God requires me to do something for Him; deliverance from law implies that He exempts me from doing it, and that in grace He does it Himself. I (where `I' is the `carnal' man of ch. 7:14) need do nothing for God: that is deliverance from law. The trouble in Romans 7 is that man in the flesh tried to do something for God. As soon as you try to please God in that way, then you place yourself under law, and the experience of Romans 7 begins to be yours.”
- A well-known Christian researcher says the church in America today is composed of many converts, but shockingly few disciples. When you read the above verses you see why there are so few disciples in America today. For the most part we want more of the best in this life than the next. Barna also states “when Christian adults were asked to identify the most important goal for their life, not a single person said it was to be a committed follower of Christ, or to make disciples of Christ.
Other findings included that the vast majority of born-again Christians do not believe absolute truth exists. And less than 1% thought there was a connection between their efforts to worship God and their development as a disciple of Jesus.
In addition, when given 13 basic teachings from the Bible, only one percent of adult believers firmly embraced all 13 as being Biblical principles.”
I believe the best way we can change this situation is prayer. Revive me oh Lord according to Your Righteousness and Word.
George MacDonald was influenced by the German romantic poet Novalis, who wrote, "We are closer to things invisible than to things visible." His belief was that Christian men and women were on a journey Homeward.
"The man who thoroughly loves God and his neighbor is the only man who will love a woman ideally - who can love her with the love God thought of between them when he made man male and female. The man, I repeat, who loves God with his very life, and his neighbour, as Christ loves him, is the man who alone is capable of grand, perfect, glorious love to any woman. George MacDonald
When John Bunyan was in prison for preaching the gospel, he wrote a document on prayer and finished it with these lines.
“I shall conclude this discourse with this word of advice to all God's people. 1. Believe that as sure as you are in the way of God you must meet with temptations. 2. The first day therefore that thou dost enter into Christ's congregation, look for them. 3. When they do come, beg of God to carry thee through them. 4. Be jealous of thine own heart, that it deceive thee not in thy evidences for heaven, nor in thy walking with God in this world. 5. Take heed of the flatteries of false brethren. 6. Keep in the life and power of truth. 7. Look most at the things which are not seen. 8. Take heed of little sins. 9. Keep the promise warm upon thy heart. 10. Renew thy acts of faith in the blood of Christ. 11. Consider the work of thy generation. 12. Count to run with the foremost therein.
Grace be with thee.”