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