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 Dick Innes


Weekend Encounter

Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes          
Published by: ACTS International

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Vol. 19 – No. 2317 June 09, 2017

 
Thought for the week: "The measure of life, after all, is not its duration but its donation." – Corrie ten Boom
 
    INDEX
1.   Words of Wisdom
2.   On the Lighter Side
3.   The Power of the Written Word
4.   Shot Down Over North Viet Nam
5.   Life
6.   Good Guys and Bad Guys
7.   Angels Unaware
8.   Receive Daily Encounter Devotional  Without Charge
9.   Weekend Encounter E-mail Edition  Without Charge
10.   Know God ... Without Having to Be Religious
11.   Seven Pillars of Character
12.   Prayer Partners Needed
13.   To Submit a Prayer Request
14.   Please Help Support Weekend Encounter
15.   Helpful Books and Cassette Messages
16.   Free Services
17.   ACTS in Action Report; Archives for Daily and Weekend Encounter
 

1. Words of Wisdom

"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you would not have in your home." – David Frost, The Chicago Tribune

"Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks; and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks." – Phillips Brooks

"Solemn prayers, rapturous devotions, are but repeated hypocrisies unless the heart and mind be conformed to them." – William Law

"A holy life will produce the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns; they only shine." Dwight L. Moody

"The gospel is neither a discussion nor a debate. It is an announcement." – Paul S. Rees

"If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done... Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow—perhaps it all will." – Solomon, Ecclesiastes 11:4, 6 (TLB).

Index

2. On the Lighter Side

Adequate Etiquette.

At a very impressive banquet a guest turned to the woman seated next to him.

"Did I get your name correctly?" he asked. "Is your name Post?

"Yes, it is," the lady said.

"Is it Emily Post?"

"Yes," she replied.

"And are you the world-renowned authority on manners?" the man asked.

"Yes, and why do you ask?"

"Because," said the man, "you have just eaten my salad."

Index

3. The Power of the Written Word

Leigh Richmond once dropped a printed tract on the pavement in England and prayed that a bad man would pick it up.

A bad man did. He carried the tract with him to prison where he was converted. From his prison cell he wrote the book, The Pilgrim's Progress, which God has used to turn untold numbers to righteousness. The prisoner's name? John Bunyan.

God has also used ACTS "tracts" (Encounter leaflets) to help lead untold numbers to Christ. More than 40 million have been distributed in a number of countries by thousands of churches, military, prison and hospital chaplains, business people, other organizations and individuals. Many thousands of salvation responses have been received since we started publishing the gospel in 1968—almost four decades ago.

Multiplied thousands more are also now being reached via the written word via ACTS websites and email services.

To see how you can share the gospel in a non-threatening way with friends, relatives, personal contacts, and neighbors, go to: www.actsweb.org/daily_encounter.php.

NOTE: And to see how God is still using the written word that ACTS is publishing via E-mail and the Internet go to: www.actsweb.org/acts_in_action.php

Index

4. Shot Down Over North Viet Nam

Howard Rutledge, a United States Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Viet Nam during the early stages of the war...

He spent several miserable years in the hands of his captors before being released at the war's conclusion. In his book In the Presence of Mine Enemies, he reflects upon the resources from which he drew in those arduous days when life seemed so intolerable:

"During those longer periods of enforced reflection it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years Phyllis [his wife] had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded—she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things. Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in Heartbreak [the name POWs gave their prison camp] solitary confinement, there was no preacher, no Sunday-School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God."

– Gordon MacDonald. Cited on KneEmail,
   kneemail-subscribe@welovegod.org

Index

5. Life

I love the gift of life,
Dear God, with all its
Beauty everywhere:
Blue skies,
White fluffy clouds,
Green trees,
Open meadows,
Beautiful flowers,
All creatures great
   and small,
Rocky mountains,
The restless, timeless sea—
But most of all
I love dear friends,
And if you will,
Please give to me
A greater love for you—
My dearest friend of all.

– Dick Innes ©

More of Dick's printed poems, beautifully presented (framed or unframed), are available for purchase on the ACTS online store at http://tinyurl.com/392ak6

Index

6. Good Guys and Bad Guys

    By Michael Josephson of Character Counts

In the old cowboy movies you could tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their hats. Villains wore black; heroes wore white. It made things easy. Too easy.

I want to put black hats on all the people who discredit their professions and disgrace themselves and their families by acts of dishonesty or uncontrolled desire.

Unfortunately, the closer I look at athletes, school administrators, corporate executives, cops, politicians, and priests who continually fill the newspapers with scandal and fuel the bonfire of cynicism, the more obvious it becomes that most of them are a mixed bag of virtues and flaws—not so different from you and me.

I point this out not to minimize or excuse their bad conduct, but to heighten awareness of how vulnerable we all are to moral blind spots. The best defense against the seductive dark side is a strong sense of integrity and a sleepless conscience.

Poet Edgar Guest put it this way:

I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able as days go by
Always to look myself straight in the eye.
I don't want to stand with the setting sun
And hate myself for the things I've done.

I don't want to keep on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,
And fool myself as I come and go
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of man I really am.
I don't want to dress myself up in sham.

I never can hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see.
I know what others may never know;
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

© 2007 Josephson Institute of Ethics; reprinted with permission. Michael Josephson, one of the nation's leading ethicists, is the founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics and the premier youth character education program, CHARACTER COUNTS! For further information visit www.charactercounts.org

Index

7. Angels Unaware

Sample of Daily Encounter by Dick Innes

"Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:1-2, KJV).

According to an article by G.K. Chesterton, "Francis of Assisi was terrified of leprosy. One day, full in the narrow path that he was traveling, he saw, horribly white in the sunshine, a leper! Instinctively his heart shrank back, recoiling from the contamination of that loathsome disease. But then he rallied; and ashamed of himself, ran and cast his arms about the sufferer's neck and kissed him and passed on. A moment later he looked back, only to find that there was no one there, only the empty road in the hot sunlight All his days thereafter he was sure it was no leper, but Christ Himself disguised as a leper whom he had met."

Perhaps this is why he wrote the beautiful prayer known as the "Prayer of St. Francis," which reads:

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Let this beautiful prayer be our suggested prayer for today. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

Index

8. Receive Daily Encounter E-mail ... Free

Daily Encounter, a free weekday e-mail inspirational from ACTS International is now going to 200,000+ subscribers. Scores of letters from around the world have come from readers saying how much they are being helped by this brief, practical devotional.

Over 50 million e-mail Daily and Weekend Encounters are delivered to subscribers every year!

Click HERE for more samples of Daily Encounter

NOTE: Some ISPs (especially AOL) now use e-mail filtering software that allows you to add e-mail addresses to your 'buddy', 'safe', or 'approved' list. Please be sure to add acts@actsweb.org to yours so you won't miss any issue of Daily Encounter.

Index

9. Receive E-mail Edition of Weekend Encounter ... Free

NOTE: Some ISPs (especially AOL) now use e-mail filtering software that allows you to add e-mail addresses to your 'buddy', 'safe', or 'approved' list. Please be sure to add acts@actsweb.org to yours so you won't miss any issue of Weekend Encounter.

Index

10. Know God ... Without having to be religious

Click on: How to Be Sure You're a Real Christian -- without having to be religious. Know God

Index

11. Seven Pillars of Character

The first of these six pillars of character are from Michael Josephson of Character counts to which I have added a seventh:

  • Trustworthiness
  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Fairness
  • Caring
  • Citizenship
  • Personal Honesty

Index

12. Prayer Partners Needed

One of ACTS greatest needs is Prayer Partners to stand with us as we seek to share the gospel with millions of people around the world through E-mail and the Internet and to win the lost to Jesus. If you would like to be an ACTS Prayer Partner, please subscribe to the Prayer Encounter list. Approximately two prayer reports are emailed monthly. Thank you.

Index

13. To Submit a Prayer Request

If you have a special prayer request please submit it to David Clark at: www.responda.co.uk/prayer.php. David is not on the ACTS staff but is offering this as a service to Daily and Weekend Encounter readers.

Helpers Needed: If you can help David pray for prayer requests, please could you go to:
www.responda.co.uk/member.php

Index

14. Help Support Weekend Encounter

    "Changing the World . . . One Person at a Time" 

Weekend Encounter and Daily Encounter are just two of the ways the nonprofit organization, ACTS International, is working to improve the spiritual and emotional life of many thousands of people around the world.

Every weekday Daily Encounter is going to 63,000+ subscribers, and every week Weekend Encounter is going to 10,500+ subscribers worldwide—many of whom are in places where it is forbidden to spread the Christian gospel and message. Plus we reach several hundred thousand more every week through our advertising. As a result every day we are seeing an average of 5-6 salvation responses from around the world—over 3000 in the past 12 months!

If you find value in the free Weekend Encounter and/or Daily Encounter, we hope you will be comfortable donating at least $26. That's only 50 cents a week for an entire year (tax-deductible in the U.S.). You can donate in one of the following ways:

Donate Online: You can donate online at ACTS secure web site. Click HERE on ACTS support donations.

Donate Through PayPal:You can donate securely through PAYPAL. Click HERE on PayPal. Where it says Payment For: type in Donation.

Donate by Telephone: ACTS accepts credit card donations by phone by calling 1-949-940-9050.

Donate Through Postal Mail: If you prefer to write a check or money order, please send it and make it payable to:

     ACTS International
     P.O. Box 73545
     San Clemente, California 92673-0119
     U.S.A.

Index

15. Helpful Books and Cassette Messages

Oprah Winfrey: "Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi." – Oprah Winfrey

Books:

Books by Dick Innes, Editor of Weekend Encounter
   You Can't Fly With a Broken Wing
   How to Mend a Broken Heart
   I Hate Witnessing—A Handbook for Effective Christian
      Communications

Books by Bestseller and Popular Authors:
   The Miracle of Kindness
   His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
     has topped the charts as the best marriage
     book available. More than one million couples
     have read it ... made their marriage sizzle.
   Fall in Love Stay in Love
   Just Hand Over the Chocolate ...
   Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships
   Sex Starts in the Kitchen
   Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours
   Harried With Children
   Adolescence Is Not an Illness
   Show Time
   It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian
   On Sale at: http://www.actscom.com/store

Cassettes:

  Healing, Wholeness & Happiness by Dick Innes
  Loving & Understanding People by Dick Innes
  I Hate Witnessing by Dick Innes
  God's Formula for Success by Dick Innes
  Damaged Emotions by David Seamands
  Healing of the Memories by David Seamands...
  On SALE at:
http://tinyurl.com/2unmmy

More books, tapes and poems by D. Innes & others are also available at: http://www.actscom.com/store

Index

16. Free Services

 1. Bible concordance and Bible helps
 2. New Hope Crisis Counseling with trained
     lay/volunteer counselors. www.newhopenow.org
 
3. E-Word Today for a daily Bible reading
 4. To find your ZIP+4 Area Code in the U.S.A.
 5. How to find and write to your U.S. Representative
 6. ASK ... Smart answers fast
 7. Send a FREE greeting card for all occasions
 8. To check the weather in your area
 9. Hoax Web Sites
10. Plus many more sources of helpful information

11. Also donate to Food for the Hungry

GO TO: http://www.actsweb.org/links.php

Index

17. ACTS in Action Report and Encounter Archives

ARCHIVES: Daily and Weekend Encounters




"The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace."


Know God

ACTS International
PO Box 73545
San Clemente, CA 92673-0119
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To receive the email edition of Weekend Encounter
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