ACTS International
Home Page of ACTS International
Home Page of ACTS InternationalHow to Find and Know God without having to be religiousLife Help Articles dealing with faith, family, and practical helps for purposeful livingDaily and Weekend Encounters with more than a third-of-a-million worldwide subscribersSupport the Work of ACTS International a not-for-profit organization. Donations are tax deductible for U.S. donorsCurrent report on the ministries and services of ACTS InternationalOnline Store of ACTS ... ACTS CommunicationsAbout ACTS International
ACTS International Home Page Click here for the current issue of  Daily Encounter
         
     
   
Tell a Friend Site Map Share and/or Bookmark
   
         
   
 Dick Innes


Weekend Encounter

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

To receive the email edition of Weekend Encounter (without charge) click on the Subscribe button.

Privacy policy: We do not sell or rent subscriber's e-mail
addresses to anyone. We value your privacy.

 
Global Communications Outreach:
Learn how to be a missionary right from your own home and have a vital part in worldwide gospel outreach by becoming an ACTS People Power for Jesus Partner. Click HERE There is no charge.
Email Share and/or Bookmark

Vol. 14 – No. 4612   November 17, 2012

 
Thought for the week: "We all die. The goal isn't to live forever; the goal is to create something that will." – Chuck Palahniuk
 
INDEX
1.   Words of Wisdom
2.   On the Lighter Side
3.   What to Know when Your Boss Doesn't
4.   Homeless Boy
5.   "Follow Me...."
6.   How Much Do You Want It To Be?
7.   Killing off the Coyotes
8.   Receive Daily Encounter Devotional  Without Charge
9.   Weekend Encounter E-mail Edition  Without Charge
10.   Know God ... Without Having to Be Religious
11.   Prayer Partners Needed
12.   Please Help Support Weekend Encounter
13.   Helpful Books, CDs, and Cassettes
14.   Services Without Charge
15.   ACTS in Action Report; Archives for Daily and Weekend Encounter

1. Words of Wisdom

"It is your attention and not your intention that determines your destination." – Unknown

"ANGER is only one letter short of DANGER." – Unknown

"Great minds have purpose, others have wishes." – Washington Irving

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." – Andrew Carnegie

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." – Eleanor Roosevelt

"Cold words freeze people and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer." – Blaise Pascal

Index

2. On the Lighter Side

A former Infantry Sergeant having served his time with the Marine Corps took a new job as a school teacher.

Just before the school year started he injured his back. He was required to wear a plaster cast around the upper part of his body. Fortunately, the cast fit under his shirt and wasn't even noticeable.

On the first day of class, he found himself assigned to the toughest students in the school.

The smart aleck punks, having already heard the new teacher was a former Marine, were leery of him and decided to see how tough he really was before trying any pranks.

Walking confidently into the rowdy classroom, the new teacher opened the window wide and sat down at his desk.

When a strong breeze made his tie flap, he took a stapler and stapled the tie to his chest.

He had no trouble with discipline that year....

SEMPER FI!

Index

3. What to Know when Your Boss Doesn't

A young engineer was leaving the office at 5:45p.m. when he found the CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.

"Listen," said the CEO, "this is a very sensitive and important document, and my secretary is not here. Can you make this thing work?"

"Certainly," said the young engineer. He turned on the machine, inserted the paper into the shredder, and pressed the start button.

"Excellent, excellent!" said the CEO as his paper disappeared inside the machine. "I just need one copy."

Lesson: If your boss doesn't know what he is doing, make sure that you do—especially if you offer to help him!

Index

4. Homeless Boy

I have read about the priest who found a young boy in the street, hungry, poorly clothed and obviously homeless. "God" he demanded furiously, "Why do you allow this to happen? Why don't you do something about it?" 

And in his mind he heard the voice of God: "I do care," he was told, "and I have done something about it. I created you."

Index

5. "Follow Me...."

In the Book of Matthew we are told of Jesus calling his first disciples. "Follow me," he said, "and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:18-22). Only once in the Gospels does it say that you must be born again (as important as this is), but it has been reported that Jesus said, "Follow me," 21 times. Almost 2,000 years later how do we measure up?

I recently heard a pastor say that the reason he doesn't give an invitation in his sermons for people to accept or to follow Jesus is because Jesus never gave an invitation! Yet 21 times that we know about Jesus said to people, "Follow me." I don't think you can get a clearer invitation than that.

Note, too, that Jesus not only said in his invitation to people to follow him, but when they did, that he would make them fishers of men. If you and I are true followers of Jesus, we, too, have been commissioned and equipped to be fishers of men; that is, to invite and seek to win people to come to, and to follow Jesus. How many preachers, teachers, witnesses today are "fishing for Jesus," but never bother to draw in the net? And how many just share a part of the good news of God's salvation (the gospel), but never inform people that to enter God's heaven, they have to be born again—spiritually; that is, otherwise they will never even see the Kingdom of Heaven, let alone enter it. It is Jesus who said that, not me (John 3:3,5).

As Jesus also said, "I have come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). When, in all of our teaching, preaching, and witnessing for Jesus Christ, if we make people feel comfortable with God just because they go to church, and never invite them to follow Jesus and to receive his forgiveness for their sins, and fail to inform them that unless they do, they will be lost for all eternity, we are not only teaching a false, incomplete gospel, but are inadvertently damning people to a lost eternity.

<<<<<>>>>>

Ron Clarke of Tasmania, Australia, wrote, "Two hundred or so years ago, the era of the great evangelists, social conditions were much worse than they are today. Working conditions bordered on slavery; poverty and starvation were rampant. Yet those years saw some of the great revivals of all time. Without sophisticated electronic equipment and massive advertising campaigns, evangelists like John Wesley drew crowds of 50,000, and thousands on their knees gave their lives to Christ. Do we now have it so good? Has society reached the point where it doesn't need God?

"I sincerely believe that people today need God more than ever before, but few have any comprehension of what God is offering them."1

It is thus the responsibility of every church and every Christian to be involved in helping to win the lost to Jesus, and to invite them to follow him. To see how you can have a vital part in helping to share God's good news and invite others to follow Jesus in a very simple, attractive and nonthreatening way (and for practical helps), please see our website at: http://www.actsweb.org/people_power02.php

1. To subscribe to Ron Clark's weekly message, e-mail w4w2@bigpond.com with the words "Subscribe Word" in the Subject line.

Index

6. How Much Do You Want It To Be?

      By Michael Josephson of Character Counts (685.2)

The founder of a company needed to choose his successor. He studied resumes and talked to references, but he decided to ask only one question during the final interview: "How much is 2 + 2?"

Ann, the first candidate, worried that there was a trick but she answered straightforwardly. "There's only one correct answer: it's four."

Terry, who had an engineering background, was more creative. "Depending on whether you're dealing with positive or negative numbers," he said, "the answer could be plus four, zero, or minus four."

Chuck, the last candidate, looked the questioner in the eye and whispered, "How much do you want it to be?"

While Ann and Terry took different approaches, they were both looking for an honest answer. Chuck, on the other hand, wanted the questioner to know that he was willing to say or do whatever it takes to succeed. Some employers may find this combination of creativity and moral flexibility highly attractive. I'd show him the door.

You see, Chuck is a manipulator and rationalizer, and they don't make good employees. They search for excuses rather than solutions, and they are more concerned with looking good than doing it right.

People like Chuck, who are adept at inventing justifications that sound good but aren't true, are simply clever liars and, eventually, they will be found out. Remember, an employee that will lie for you will lie to you.

Without conscience there is no credibility; without credibility there is no trust; and without trust there is no future.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

© 2012 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. Killing off the Coyotes

A sample of Daily Encounter by Dick Innes

"Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."1

In his book, Rewriting the Family Script, Roger Hillerstrom shares how "a small, Midwestern town once sponsored a coyote hunt because so many farmers were losing chickens to the predators. Fifteen hundred coyotes were killed over a single weekend.

"However, within a few months the entire community was overrun with rodents, because their natural enemy, the coyote, had been eliminated. A year after that, the rodents weren't much of a problem, but the rattlesnakes were! Because there were so many rats and mice for them to eat, the poisonous snakes had reproduced rapidly.

"At that point, the chickens were safe, but the humans were in danger! You see, the coyotes had been an important part of the environmental system—the food chain. When one part of that system changed, other parts adapted to the new reality."2

When we as individuals, groups, or societies and even some churches get rid of God's Word, the Ten Commandments, and overthrow God's standards to do as we please, and seek to throw out God himself, the seeds of our ultimate destruction are sown. God is not mocked. In time, we all reap what we have sown.

As the Apostle Paul exhorted the Christians in Corinth: "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men [and women] of courage; be strong. Do everything in love."3

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, amid the ever increasing pressure in our society to get rid of anything to do with the Bible and with you, please help me to be on my guard, be strong, and stand firm in my Christian faith. And help me to so live that others, seeing Jesus in me, will want him for themselves. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Galatians 6:7 (NKJV).
2. P. Roger Hillerstrom, Rewriting the Family Script, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Fleming H. Revell, 1995), p. 19. Cited on www.sermons.com.
3. 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (NIV).

For more information on Daily Encounter, Click HERE.
To Subscribe Click on: http://www.actsweb.org/subscribe.php.

Index

8. Receive Daily Encounter E-mail ... Without Charge

Daily Encounter, a without charge weekday e-mail inspirational from ACTS International is now going to 390,000+ 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 100 million e-mail Daily, Weekend and Prayer Encounters are delivered to subscribers every year!

Click HERE for more samples of Daily Encounter
Click HERE to subscribe

 

 


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 ... Without Charge

Click HERE to subscribe

 

Index

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

Click HERE to Know God and be sure you're a real Christian

 

Index

11. 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 one prayer report is e-mailed monthly. Thank you.

Click HERE to subscribe

Index

12. 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 390,000+ subscribers, and every week Weekend Encounter is going to 7,784 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—almost 3000 in the past 12 months!

If you find value in the 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

13. Helpful Books, CDs and Cassettes

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

Click HERE for books, CDs, tapes and poems by Dick Innes and others.

Index

14. Services Without Charge

 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 greeting card without charge for all occasions
 8. To check the weather in your area
 9. Hoax Web Sites
10. Plus many more sources of helpful information

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

Index

15. ACTS in Action Report and Encounter Archives

ARCHIVES: Daily and Weekend Encounters


"Because the world is hungry,
go with bread.
Because the world is filled with strife,
go with peace.
Because the world is filled with deceptions and lies,
go with truth.
Because the world would die without,
go with the love of God."



© 2012 ACTS International


Know God

ACTS International
PO Box 73545
San Clemente, CA 92673-0119
U.S.A.

To receive the email edition of Weekend Encounter
without charge click on the Subscribe button.

Privacy policy: We do not sell or rent subscriber's e-mail
addresses to anyone. We value your privacy.

 
   
         
   
Site Map   Top
   
     
         
Find Peace With God footer
 
  ARTICLES
About God
About Faith
Relationships
Success/Failure
Solutions
Recovery
Ask the Teacher
Better Living Tips
Friendship
Words of Love
Words of Inspiration
People Power for Jesus
Simple and Effective Witnessing for Christ

SITE TRANSLATIONS
Spanish Espanol
French Francois

  DEVOTIONS
Devotionals
Daily Encounter
Weekend Encounter
Encuentros Diarios
Archives
Subscribe
When God Is Silent
Prayer Partners
  Needed

Special Needs

BIBLE HELPS
Helps and Studies
Today's Reading
Annual Reading

  QUOTES AND TESTS
Today's Quotes
Happiness Test
Stress Test

ACTS IN ACTION

ACTS Websites
ACTS in Action Report

COMMUNICATIONS

Syndicate ACTS Articles
"I Hate Witnessing"
   Audio—No Charge

Opening Closed Minds
Effective Communications
Jesus, the Communicator
Punching Holes in
   the Darkness

  REPORTS
About ACTS
Be an ACTS Friend

MISC.
People Power Invite
Links
Weather
Privacy Policy
Snail-Mail List
Contact Us/Feedback

ACTS BOOKSTORE
Online Bookstore


Site Map
Report problems to ACTS International
All pages in this site © Copyright 2005-2024 by ACTS International
P.O. Box 73545, San Clemente, CA 92673 U.S.A.
 
HOME   Daily Encounter  Find Peace With God