Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 18 - No. 5116 December 17, 2016
Wishing all our reades a very Merry and God blessed Christmas, and many thanks for the opportunity to share with you in this way every week. From Dick and Joy Innes.
Thought
for the week: "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." – Mother Teresa
"A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life." – Lewis Mumford
"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for. Perfection is God's business." – Michael J. Fox
"I do the best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end." – Abraham Lincoln
"Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." – Samuel Ullman
"Not what I have but what I do is my kingdom." – Thomas Carlyle
"The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal." – Sallust
"Example moves the world more than doctrine." – Henry Miller
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5, and Ryan, 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.'" Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"
"The message of Christmas is not about the proclamation of a holiday or the declaration of a season. It is about the proclamation of a Person and the declaration of Salvation. The birth of the child in the manger was an event that prophets had written about, the people of Israel had spoken about, the patriarchs of old had wondered about, and the angels of God shouted about on that glorious night when Christ was born."
– Roy Lessin, Co-Founder DaySpring Cards.
Submitted by Dr. Cath Filmer-Davies
As a young man, Oswald Chambers, who wrote the materials that became My Utmost For His Highest, battled a persistent sense of barrenness in his Christian life.
He finally wrote: I was getting desperate. I knew no one who had what I wanted; in fact I did not know what I did want. But I knew that if what I had was all the Christianity there was, the thing was a fraud.
At a little meeting in Dunoon, a well-known lady was asked to take the after meeting. She did not speak, but set us to prayer, and then sang, "Touch me again, Lord." I felt nothing, but I knew emphatically my time had come. I rose to my feet. Then and there I claimed the gift of the Holy Spirit in dogged committal on Luke 11:13.1
I had no vision of heaven or of angels; I had nothing. I was as dry and empty as ever, no power or realization of God, no witness of the Holy Spirit. Then I was asked to speak to a meeting and forty souls came out to the front! I came to realize that God intended me, having asked, to simply take it by faith, and that power would be there. I might see it only by the backward look, but I was to reckon on the fact that God would be with me.
From that point on, Oswald Chambers ministered with extraordinary power. His words and writings touched people around the world, especially when he taught, as he frequently did, from his favorite verse, Luke 11:13.2
And when Oswald died at an early age in Egypt during World War I, an old Australian soldier whom he had led to Christ had a Bible carved in stone for his grave. Its pages were turned to Luke 11:13.2
1. "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him" (Luke 11:13, NIV).
"Life's not about expecting, hoping and wishing, it's about doing, being and becoming. It's about the choices you've just made, and the ones you're about to make, it's about the things you choose to say [and do]—today.
"I Just Talk to People" (463.5) by Michael Josephson of Character Counts
Marta was a hard-working single mother. When her minister sermonized about "living a life that matters," she worried that working to raise her kids and going to church wasn't enough. So, on the bus to work she made a list of other jobs she could do and volunteer work she could try.
Sylvia, an elderly woman, saw the worry on Marta's face and asked what was wrong. Marta explained her problem. Sylvia said, "Oh my, did your minister say you weren't doing enough?"
"No," Marta said, "But I don't know how to live 'a life that matters'."
"You don't have to change jobs or do more volunteer work," Sylvia consoled her. "It's enough that you're a good mother. But if you want to do more, think about what you can do while doing what you already do. It's not about what you do, but how you do it."
"You don't understand," Marta said. "I sell hamburgers. How do I make that significant?"
"How many people do you deal with every day?" Sylvia asked.
"Two to three hundred."
"Well, what if you set out to cheer, encourage, teach or inspire as many of those people as you could? A compliment, a bit of advice, a cheerful hello or a warm smile can start a chain reaction that lights up lives like an endless string of Christmas bulbs."
"But that's just being nice," Marta protested.
"Right," said Sylvia, "Niceness can change lives."
Marta looked at the old woman. "What do you do?"
"I was a housekeeper until I retired," Sylvia said. "Now I just ride the bus talking to people."
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
On a December day back in 1903 at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright, after numerous failures to fly a heavier-than-air machine, made amazing history. They achieved something that no man had ever done before. Ecstatic, they sent a telegram to their sister Katherine: "We have actually flown 852 feet. Will be home for Christmas."
Overjoyed, Katherine ran down to the local newspaper and pushed the telegram—the greatest news story of the new century—into the hand of the editor. After reading it, he smiled and said, "Well, well! How nice the boys will be home for Christmas."
The religious people of Christ's day who were actually anticipating his coming as their Messiah failed totally to recognize him—and ironically had him crucified—because he didn't come and didn't operate in the way they expected him to.
How sad it is that so many miss the full meaning of Christmas in that they have never thanked Jesus for dying for their sins, nor accepted the most profound and precious Christmas gift ever given ... the gift of the Savior and his pardon for all their sins and his gift of eternal life.
Jesus said, "The people of this generation ... are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry'" (Luke 7:32, NIV).
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for the most wonderful Christmas gift ever given—the gift of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Please use me to share your great gift of salvation with as many people as possible for as long as I shall live. And because of my inadequacies, please do this through me. Use me every day to be as Christ to whomever you bring into my life and grant that they, seeing Jesus in me, will want you for themselves. Eternally grateful, in Jesus' name. Amen."
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