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JUST THE TIP! [1 Corinthians 13:12]
We are told, by those who know, that the visible tip of an iceberg is less than one-third of its total mass.
Our relationship with God is like that: what we see is very little compared to what is available.
We ought to be grateful for the privilege of being able to stand on what we can see, after all God was under no obligation to reveal Himself at all. O' the joy of knowing that our God, in all His glory, is far more than we can imagine or grasp.
GREEN LIGHT POWER: [Romans 1:16]
From my good friend Cornelius Claassen in Wellcomen, South Africa ...
Spending fever has reached all walks of South African life. Here's a fellow who lives in a squatter camp beyond Somerset West in Western Cape who now wants a television set — a new one, mind, not that secondhand thing in the pawn-shop window - so he buys one from the High Street furniture retailer.
But he's back next day, saying the thing keeps switching off just at the crucial moment. The shop checks it out and can find nothing wrong, but soon enough he's back with the same complaint.
This time the shop sends out a technician to pop round to see what the problem is. When the technician gets there, he discovers our guy's shack draws its electricity from a nearby traffic light, and that the TV only works when the light is green.
There's no argument some people think God's power is intermittent but they fail to notice they've plugged into the AC (alternating current) outlet rather than the DC (direct current) outlet. God provides the DC, I wonder who provides the AC?
The above was copied directly from a South African newspaper (which is unknown to The CRIB).
BETTER TO BE BLIND! [John 8:12; Illumination, Jesus, Life] (Added 3 June 2006)
Imagine no red rose, no blue sky, rolling but grey hills, and a several shades of grey Monarch Butterfly. Without light, there is no color. Color is just bands of light reflected off an object; which bands are reflected depends on the nature of the object. Without light, things would be very plain … AND VERY DARK.
So too without Christ … imagine no hope, no love, no future, and no present purpose for living.
Jesus said, "I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Without the light of Christ, there would be no spiritual blessings, no sustaining grace, and no “daily bread” worth eating. Just as it is impossible to receive mail without a delivery address, it is impossible to receive a true blessing outside the person and authority of Christ but it is the individuals nature that brings His ultimate blessing.
COME INTO THE LIGHT! [1 Peter 1:19; Revelation, Sin, Truth]
One of our church janitors was in my office the other day and told me a fascinating but sad story.
A hardworking man finally had time to go to a night baseball game with his family. They were doing the usual things: eating hot-dogs and peanuts, drinking cokes, and complaining about the prices.
His wife, a registered nurse and mother of his three kids, said something and he turned in such a way that the park lights were directly in his eyes. She gasped and took his face in her hands to have a closer look. Her suspicion was correct, his eyes were jaundiced, a sign of several serious diseases. Within a few weeks her childhood sweetheart and the father of her three children was dead.
Man must come into the light of God to see the ravaging affects of his sins. He is little more than the walking dead without the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb. The Light reveals the truth for all to see. Many will come into the light too late. [1 Corinthians 4:5]
CONSUMED BY HIS POWER! [2 Corinthians 4:4; gospel, power (God's)]
My associate pastor, Dan, used to work for Orkin (the pesty people); he was pulpit supply for me this morning and I was blessed to hear an illustration he used on the whole armor of God [Epesian 6:10-17].
Orkin evidently had special Maglites with custom commercial grade batteries in them ... make that battery. Instead of four D-cells it had a single, long battery. I gather They're like those used by law enforcement. At any rate he said it was a blessing when he was crawling around in attics and under houses; it would light up the area from one end to the other.
He used this tool to illustrate the power of the Light of God, Jesus our Lord. When an ordinary flashlight was shined directly into the beam of light coming from his Maglite the beam from the common flashlight was consumed by the power of the more powerful light.
So too the power of Satan, when it is exposed to the Light of God.
Lava Lamps have made a comeback in recent years (2002). Many of today’s versions are more creative than when they were first introduced some forty years ago.
All lava lamps have one thing in common, none of them are adequate as a source of light. They're called a lamp, but they're not a lamp.
The age of their introduction was an age of darkness and half-light. People in that day didn’t want a lot of light. You might say they wanted just enough of the real thing so they could call the facsimile by name of the real thing.
Unfortunately, many Christians aren’t much better than lava lamps; they don’t really want the whole Light of God, just enough so they can go by the name of the Genuine Light yet remain in the shadows.
TURNING TOWARD THE LIGHT! [Ephesians 5:7-10; other topics - Holiness, Righteousness] (Added 3 June 2006)
Our adopted daughter, Naomi, was admiring one of her mom’s houseplants. Her older sister, Jennifer, asked her if she noticed how the plant leaned toward the light coming through the front window. She said, “Yeah!” He sister then told her, “If you turn the plant around halfway, the plant will lean back toward the light inside of a week.” Naomi said, “Wow!”
Likewise genuine Christians; separate them from the Light, or turn them away from the Light, and inside a short period of time they will have leaned back toward Him.
AS CLEAR AS MUD! [1 Samuel 16:7; cleansing, heart, righteousness]
Rudy, one of the men in our church, took on the job of cleaning and waxing the floor of the ladies bathroom. After stripping the floor, we both marveled at how clean it was compared to its earlier condition. I then had to leave to run a few errands.
While I was gone, Rudy decided to try a detergent cleanser on the floor, just to see if it might improve the appearance even further.
I returned in the middle of his efforts. Half of the already once-cleaned floor was bright and like new, the other dark with grime ... this was the same floor we’d just a short while earlier thought was "very" clean.
Man labors in his efforts to live a clean life ... but the Bible says "there are none righteous, no not one" [Romans 3:10-18]. Man examines himself and says, "I’m not so bad! At least not as bad as so-and-so." But God doesn’t look at the outer man, as we do. What we see with our natural eyes appears clean but what God sees is far from clean.
The blood of Jesus cleanses in such a way that is beyond man’s understanding. That which is stained permanently black from sin is cleansed to pure white. Had we known how truly dirty the floor was in the first place perhaps we would not have been fooled into believing it clean. Were man to know how desperately polluted his sins have made him he would never claim to be "Worse than some but better than most; after all I’ve never murdered anyone or robbed a bank or plundered and raped."
BLOOD STAINED TESTIMONY! [1 Peter 1:19; atonement, power]
A Gideon friend recently told of how their well-known, pearl-white New Testaments were distributed to the Pacific Fleet prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.
He also told of how, on a later occasion, the evangelist Harry Rimmer was speaking to a meeting of believers interested in military evangelism. During the speech, Dr. Rimmer displayed his own personal copy of the white Pacific Fleet New Testament.
Following the meeting, a member of the audience tarried to show Dr. Rimmer another white New Testament, one given to his son prior to the bombing of the Hawaiian base ... one stained with blood. The man smiled and said, "Yes … this little book is very precious … it’s … stained with the blood of my son." Dr. Rimmer paused for a moment, then held up his personal Bible and said, "God feels the same way about that Book. He loves [it] too. Its pages are stained with the blood of His Son." [Thanks to Brian Stromsoe, of The Gideons, for recently sharing this vignette with our church.]
Indeed it is; each page of Holy Writ is covered with that precious, precious blood which flowed from pierced and bleeding side of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
MAJOR FOWL UP! [1 Peter 1:17-19; iniquity, licentiousness, permissiveness, secular humanism, sin]
Except for two weeks out of the year, Geese are federally protected game birds. Yet they're killing cattle. Recently a Virginia Beef Corp. spokesman informed WorldNetDaily (WND) that wildlife protections have resulted in overpopulation of the species; they’re crowding – and fouling – pastures where livestock graze.
WND was told that goose droppings, which carry swine and other viruses, are causing a profusion of stillbirths among heifers. Some 65 calves, valued at about $3,000 each on the market, have been lost this year at Virginia Beef's Louden County, Va., pastures … only one of many such pastures affected.
Similarly, federal protection of sin has resulted in the eternal damnation of tens of thousands of American citizens. In recent years representatives of the Christian community have been trying to warn public and private groups about the ever increasing problems associated with the licentious and permissive behavior of our fellow citizens.
Like most birds, sinners have been fouling their own and our nests with government sanction. The absence of moral clarity and its accompanying devaluation of human life has resulted in a holocaust of murders among unborn children. This moral and ethical dysfunction has brought about the eternal loss of an untold number of Americans … at what cost? Just the precious blood of Jesus!
I’m A Paper Clip Kind of Guy [Zechariah 4:6; Holy Spirit Power]
Take a strong magnet (such as found in a audio speaker) and some paper clips as a visual aid; hold the magnet over the clips and let the magnet catch them up.
Explain what holds the paper clips in your hand: gravity, the law of physics that posits a larger mass will attracts a smaller mass. Now explain that the small magnet has just overcome the entire earth’s gravity.
The Holy Spirit (who we wrongly see as not so powerful) does the same thing. He overcomes the power of the world, the flesh and the devil.
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