–Jentzen Franklin–

There are people in the Bible who were what we would think of as just an ordinary person if we had known them at the time. If we had been their next door neighbor, we probably would have thought of them as a person just like us who struggled with problems and issues that were sometimes overwhelming.

Yet God looked at them and knew He would be able to work through them to do some awesome and supernatural things. He gave them a vision or told them a particular thing and they had to decide whether they would believe it and expect it to come to pass or if they would let the passage of time dim the vision enough that it would be forgotten and die.

When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he was threshing wheat for food in a hidden place so the Midianites would not come and take it away. The Israelites had disobeyed God repeatedly and had been delivered into the hands of the Midianites for seven years. They had pretty much impoverished the children of Israel and they were greatly discouraged to the point that they were crying out to God to save them.

Hardly any human person would have been able to look at Gideon and see that he would have the potential to become a mighty and courageous warrior who would lead the fight for freedom from their oppression. Yet God saw what he was capable of doing with HIS supernatural strength and ability. God chose Gideon, but he had to make the choice of whether he would step out on faith or stay hidden in the winepress where the angel of the Lord had found him.

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Being sold out to God is not for the fainthearted. You don’t always have to have superhuman physical strength, but you do need a supernatural touch from God and have HIS ability working in you to accomplish what He desires.

God can see so much more in you than you will ever be able to see in yourself.  He knows what you can accomplish, so don’t limit Him by telling yourself you will never be able to accomplish the “impossible” looking thing He has called you to do. He already knows you can do it with HIS strength and ability.

Make the choice to go with God. One thing I can promise you is that your life will never be boring and mundane again because you don’t feel you have a purpose.

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Twice a year they send teams in to check on the kids and do preventive health maintenance. If they have a minor health problem, they are given medicine to treat it. Otherwise they are given vitamins and a worm pill to keep them healthy.

Each day was long as we saw several hundred kids, but even though I was tired each night I felt good. I think the children blessed me much more than I could have ever blessed them. They lived in worse conditions than us, yet they all had a ready smile on their face and wanted to interact with us even though we couldn’t speak the same language. When we drove down the road they would wave, smile and yell as we drove by.  We got a huge joy out of waving back to them. I found out that you can communicate quite a bit even if you don’t speak the same language.

Of course their customs are much different than ours in the United States, and many of them I think they have right and we are the ones who need to change. At 6:30 each morning several Haitian adults came to our compound for a Bible study. Most of it was not translated because the person leading it wanted it to continue to be about them instead of us. We were to be observers and learn from them.

They came into the room with only one thing in mind – to study the Bible and understand as much as they could about the passage they would read that morning. They didn’t fellowship, laugh, or talk about anything once they came into the room. They were intent on worshiping and learning about God.

One of the men brought a guitar and played and led some worship choruses. We recognized some of the music and sang along with our English words. Then they started in a certain place in the Bible and read a whole chapter. I couldn’t help but notice how intent everyone was in paying attention to the words being read aloud. Everyone did not own a Bible, but the ones who did seemed to treasure it. They would treat it very carefully and some were placed in plastic bags so they would not get dusty or dirty.

After the chapter was read, they had a chance to ask questions about anything they didn’t understand. Each day they asked enough questions to fill the hour, with more waiting to be answered. What an intense hunger they had for the WORD!

The Word of God is truly a treasure and more valuable than diamonds for the Child of God. It is His instruction book to show us how to live a victorious life for Him. We all make a choice each 24 hours as to how we will fill the valuable time we have been allotted.

Make the study of God’s Word a priority each day. God has so much He wants to show you and He wants to change your life for the better. Ask Him to give you an intense hunger to study His Word and treasure it like those Haitians did. I came back extremely tired and it took me several days to catch up on sleep, but I have asked God to change me and mold me into a vessel that can be used for His Glory. What an awesome way to live life to the fullest each day!

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We use the excuse that we don’t have a degree in theology or Bible, or the Pastor is the one who is supposed to make sure we know these things. There is no possible way he can do that in a couple of hours a week. You must read and study the Word for yourself – then if you have any questions you should ask your pastor or another mature Christian to explain what you don’t understand.

If you don’t really know the truth, it will be easy for Satan to make you believe a lie. Usually he will give you just enough truth to make you think that everything he says is the truth.

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If we sometimes looked a little more to the connection of sentences, we should be kept from very dangerous errors. The Bible ought to be treated in conformity with common sense, as you would use any other book. If you took the writings of any author, however carefully he might express himself, if you picked out a sentence here and a sentence there, [you] might make the man to say what he never believed; nay, even make him to be the supporter of opinions which he abhors. So it is with the Bible: if you pay no regard to the connection and general run of the passage, you miss the mind of the Spirit of God, and rather thrust your own mind into God’s words than bring out God’s mind from the words of the Holy Ghost.

From a sermon entitled “Working Out What Is Worked In,” delivered July 12, 1868.

The Daily Spurgeon

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No matter what version of the Bible you read, you will never truly be able to understand it without the Holy Spirit opening your mind, comprehension, and ears to hear the real truth – not just the truth as you have always perceived it to be.

If you don’t read the Bible with the determination that you want to know the truth, your mind will filter the parts that make you uncomfortable, telling you that the changes you need to make are far beyond your grasp or helping you justify why you don’t need to change.

*  If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, make it a point to read the Bible for a few minutes each morning. You can start out with 5 or 10 minutes, asking the Holy Spirit to show you truths that you have never seen before. It won’t take long for you to look at the Bible differently. It will change your life to the point that you will never want to go back to where you were before.

Don’t let Satan make you believe the lie that the Bible is boring or just an old fashioned irrelevant book that is out of date for today’s times. Its Words are life, health, and well-being for the one who reads it and applies its words to their life.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

Related posts:

1. Dwell on truth and the things of God.
2. What An Awesome Truth!!!
3. Be Careful When You Open The Door!

God has given each of these for our own best interest, so we all need to get back to the basics and take them seriously. Not only that, but God will bless you for keeping His Commandments.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living – Practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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The ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That’s two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house.

Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold. A contractor by trade, Huibers built the ark of cedar and pine. Biblical scholars debate exactly what the wood used by Noah would have been. Huibers did the work mostly with his own hands, using modern tools and with occasional help from his son Roy.

Huibers, a Christian man, said he hopes the project will renew interest in Christianity in the Netherlands, where church going has fallen dramatically in the past 50 years.

Mr Huibers spent nearly two years building the ark. He began building in May 2005, after he dreamed of the Netherlands being flooded.

“In February 1992, I had a dream that Holland will become flooded. The next day, I found a book about Noah’s Ark in the local bookshop, and since then, my dream has been to build the ark,” he said.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living - Practical ways to learn to live a victorious Christian life

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

The picture below is a fish instead of a lion, but it makes a dramatic point as to the fact that Satan is always looking for a way to bring you down.

That is why the Bible says the Christian must always be on the lookout for his methods of deception. God has given instructions as to how to defeat Satan, but you must be obedient to what He says. An example of this would be His teaching on anxiety, fear, and worry in Matthew 6: 24-34.

You have the choice to entertain them and open the door for Satan to wreak havoc, or you can choose to trust God to take care of the situation and have victory over the flesh. You must stand on the truth even though your feelings might tell you something completely different. You can always trust the Word of God over what your flesh tells you.

Another thing I noticed in the picture is that the people in the boat are concentrating on the fin, while the humongous fish is right beneath them waiting for the opportune time to strike. They don’t realize that the danger is much closer than they think.

That is what Satan does; he tries to get your mind off the larger thing by getting you to focus on something much smaller that you think is not an immediate threat.

It is not always an easy thing to determine in your heart that you will stand on the truths of the Bible, but it is easy to convince yourself that your strong feelings must be right. Don’t give yourself any other option except pure truth.

Ask God to give you the faith to think the right thoughts, say the right words, and stand wholeheartedly on His promises. As your faith increases, you will be able to stand against the wiles of Satan through the power of Jesus. Let Him give you the strength to walk each day in victory.

Don’t settle for anything less than the Power of God in your life!

Check out my other sites:

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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Please check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

Related posts:

1. Books of the Bible Puzzle

The first time I saw this photo it reminded me of something important about my walk with God. When I am in the center of His Will, I picture myself walking in sync with Him step by step. Even if He leads me in a path that has some curves in it, I still know that I am walking on the right path.

Then I am reminded of times when I thought I could do it on my own and had everything under control. I veered off to the left or right, and even took gigantic detours away from where God wanted me to be. I was not doing bad things; I was just not doing the things that He wanted me to do.

The road above makes hairpin turns and seems to do a lot of backtracking due to the rough layout of the land. The scenery is breathtaking, but when you take this road you will probably have to go many miles further to get to your destination than if you had just taken a straight road.  If you choose to take a road like this on your own in your spiritual walk, you will be traveling a lot, but gaining very little maturity in your spiritual growth. You will always be veering off to the right or left and wasting valuable time that could be used on doing something productive for God.

The Christian life is always full of choices. You can make the choice to fully committ your life to Christ and walk with Him wherever He leads. Make this your first priority and see the miraculous things God will do for you.

I have found that once I finally make a choice and truly settle it in my mind, things start to get easier at that moment. I have a resolve that I didn’t have before, and start to think about things differently. I just know what I have to do, start to do it, and develop discipline in that area.

In order to grow spiritually, you should committ to daily study of God’s Word, set aside a time for prayer, and ask God to give you wisdom and discernment to be able to see the truth and understand what you are reading in the Bible. Also ask God to open doors for service in the areas that He desires, and to convict you when you start to veer off to the left or right without His leading.

It might not be easy to stay disciplined at first, but if you will stick to it you will start to see God in a way that you have never seen Him before. He will start to reveal Himself to you in a mighty way.

One of the greatest things that you can ever do is committ your life fully to Christ.

Please check out my other web sites:

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

I found this picture at a site called www.tomrobinsonphotography.com

He has given permission to use this picture, and there are many more beautiful landscapes there. Feel free to check them out. They are pictures that tell a story about the people and landmarks of different countries.

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In the puzzle, you have to find 30 books of the Bible. They are hidden in all different ways such as spanning through the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, starting in the middle or end of a word, not being capitalized, even spanning from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line down.

In a few minutes I found 14, which were the more obvious ones. Then it got harder. I kept looking and found a few more. After about 30 more minutes I had found 24, but for the next 10, I had to force myself to look differently at the text than I had at first. I printed off the puzzle and wrote the books of the Bible on the side of the page.

I know the last 6 will be really hard, but I intend to find them. I will probably just have to think in another different way to do it. This is just a reminder to me that God is always working in ways that I never even think of. He works “outside-of-the-box” when my thinking is usually “inside-of-the-box.”

Print this puzzle and see how many books you can find. Maybe it will encourage you to think “outside-of-the box” in other areas of your life.

If you have “tunnel vision,” make sure that the tunnel leads straight to God. There is no such think as a “comfort zone” when you are truly letting God guide you. You will never be able to say that life is boring when you are truly following God.

I would love for you to write a post and let me know how many of the books you can find.

BOOKS OF THE BIBLE PUZZLE

There are 30 books of the Bible in this paragraph. Can

you find them? This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was

found by a gentleman in airplane seat pocket, on a flight

from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for

hours. He enjoyed it so much, he passed it on to some

friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while

fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while

playing his banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was

so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly

newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of

solving this puzzle so involving, she brews a cup of tea

to help her nerves. There will be some names that are

really easy to spot, that’s a fact. Some people, however,

will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the

book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully,

from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually

takes a minister or a scholar to see some of them at the

worst. Research has shown that something in our genes

is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing the

books in this paragraph. During a recent fund raising

event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi

lemonade booth set a new record. The local paper, the

Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that

this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever

seen. As Daniel Humana humbly puts it, “The books are all

right here in plain view hidden from sight.” Those able

to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who

have to be shown. One revelation that may help

is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without

their numbers. Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and

spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help

you compete really well against those who claim to

know the answers. Remember, there is no need for a

mad exodus; there really are 30 books of the Bible

lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found.

God Bless You

Other Resources:

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word 

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