SEEKING PEACE IN A TROUBLED WORLD--MARIANNE LORDI

I wanted to share another article with all my readers by my good friend Marianne Lordi. She writes so sensitively regarding God's care and concern for us. She has a good understanding of God's Sovereignty, and how He saves sinners. She has been writing  for several years, and has been able to help many who were seemingly at the bottom. I pray that God will use her here to help any who are in despair. You may contact her through one of her sites God's Promises Are Real found by this link:  http://mblordi.com   Write her if you desire, and tell her that you read Seeking Peace in a Troubled World. Pray for her. She is a good person.

  

He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. (Psalm 23)

There is nothing more painful than to be on your knees pouring out your heart to God only to watch as your dreams being crushed before your eyes.  If you are a true believer, you know by faith that  God heard your cries for help.  He has said in his word that he would never leave you nor abandon you.Yet despite knowing that God is aware of your struggle, you still feel left with nothing but a broken heart, eyes that can’t stop crying and a question within as to why he would allow you to go through this pain.

It is difficult to understand when you are overwhelmed, but  your attitude in times of trouble is an indicator of where your faith lies.  When you face a trial in your life, it is a struggle to believe that God will be there to help you through it. You feel alone. Yet, the more serious your problem, the more grace he extends to you. You are never left to fight a battle on your own. We can all trust God when we have some control in the situation. But when the problem is impossible for us or anyone else to help, that is when our faith is put to the test.

Jesus told us in John 16:33, ” In this world you will have trials and tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”   It doesn’t matter what we face, all things are under the sovereign authority of Christ.  It is his will that prevails in the outcome of every problem we face.   If you will try to understand that truth, it will bring you peace when all hope seems gone. Your struggle is actually the transforming power that reveals God’s strength. It is always his purpose to bring you through your heartache and reveal more of himself to you.  Your battles are won long before they start because Christ paid the price for your victory.  That may seem difficult to comprehend when your heart is breaking – but that is the truth. 

You were created for God’s glory and his purpose.  He has made ready the royal robes that those who trust in Christ shall wear one day in his kingdom.  All things are being orchestrated in God’s magnificent plan for your life.  As a sparrow does not fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father,  I pray that you also know that every tear you shed is before God and subject to his ultimate authority.  Your heart cannot be broken beyond our Creator’s hand to heal. It just can’t happen. There is no situation you face that can ever empty out the future God planned for you. Although you may not feel it now, your life is filled to overflow with God’s unending power and purpose.  His angels are surrounding those who belong to him. There is nothing that has been left to chance.

You can enjoy quiet peace in spite of your pain when you stop trying to control the way God works in your situation and let him work it out his way.  You can take rest knowing  that whatever God allows in your life, he has planned it long before you were born to use it for your good.  His ways will always be higher than ours, but his ways are the only path to victory.  Surrender your pain to Christ who will heal you and give you back abundant hope from the ashes of your broken dreams.   We read in James 1:12, “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” 

We are all going through the battle of our life, dear friends.  No one is exempt from the sufferings of this world.  Whatever you are facing, there is always hope when you belong  to Christ.  There will be a time for your trial to end; and if you have held out in faith to the end, you will be rewarded in this life and the next.  Why does God allow us to go through heartache and pain?  It is only  in the crucible that we gain an eternal perspective of the power of the God we serve. It is there that we see that Christ does meet us in every trial causing it all to work according to his perfect plan.  It is there  that we are strengthened as  he draws us near to him.

Finally, believers who can praise Christ through the pain and keep their eyes on him no matter what storm surrounds them are proven to be the true sons and daughters  of the King.   Remember the words of God in Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.”   That is a promise from God.

I am praying for those who need to hear this message. May you know that your tears are not in vain.  You still have hope regardless of what you are facing.  This world is perishing and yet those who belong to Christ shall never be destroyed.  Let him work out your problem and restore your peace.   Don’t settle for the lies of the enemy. You were meant for more!

THROWING AWAY THE BIBLE---CHARLES WOODRUFF

(The following article I wrote about 2007. I have been down with a cold, and cough for several days, and I was looking through my files for some already written material. It is true that I could have sent something by another writer, but I haven't written anything in over two weeks, so I looked carefully to see if there was something that would work. Then I came across this article, which I don't think many of you have read. So, I share this with you, and pray it will be a blessing. I did some slight revision on it. Please comment if you like it. Thanks. (cw))

Recently my youngest son, Mark, built some nice bookshelves for my office. Before this, I had quite a few books that couldn’t be found, because of lack of display room. Mark did a great job, and much of the problem has been remedied. In going through books, which had been stored for quite a while, it has been necessary to discard a few of them. I did come across two books that were extremely hard to throw away. They were both Bibles; a Russian one and an old KJV. Both were in pretty bad shape with missing pages. Both were ordinary Bibles that had long ago seen their best days.

You may not realize, my dear friends, how difficult it was for me to discard those two Bibles. You see, I remember well that Christians in Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and other former communist countries had great difficulty in obtaining a bible. I know this first hand. I have been in these countries. When I worked with ECL/Door of Hope, and later, Russian Bible Society as a missionary representative, I made several trips overseas, and each time Bibles and Christian books were secretly taken in by me and others.

I remember being in Kiev, in the Ukraine, in the home of Georgi Vins in 1978. At the time he was in prison for preaching the gospel contrary to the registration laws of the government of the USSR, so we met with his mother, Lydia, and his wife, Nadezhda.  As a leader of the Evangelical Christian Baptists of the USSR (the unregistered church in that era), he and others such as Gennady Krychkov were severely persecuted for their faith. In good conscience they could not yield to the state controlling Christ’s church.

Later when Georgi and his family were released in an exchange worked out by the Carter administration, they came to the USA. I met him in Syracuse, NY and interviewed him for the Bible Journal. He told me at that time the greatest need in the USSR was for Bibles, especially in the languages of the smaller Soviet states. This need still exists today for some of those areas. Russian Bible Society is endeavoring to meet that need. More about Georgi Vins:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Vins      

I remember in 1985 traveling by train from Budapest, Hungary to Arad, Romania, with about 20-25 Bibles hidden in my luggage. At the Romanian border, the female guard searched my luggage and found about six of them.  I pleaded with her, with tears in my eyes, to let me keep them for friends, but to no avail. She made out her little report, gave me a copy, and said I could pick them up at the border when I came out. I knew I wasn’t coming back that way, and even if I did, likely would not have gotten them back. I went on my way, praising God that she did not find the rest of them which were in my other bag that had food items, and film, and some things I had bought in Budapest.

Of course, the ones I took in were quickly given away in the churches that Dorin Motz and I visited in Romania. Toward the end of the trip, all I had left was my personal Bible in English. When a brother asked me if I had Bibles, I told him all I had was my own Bible in English. He said “Brother, please give me that one. I can read some English, and you can easily get another one”. He was right you know, and I gave it to him gladly!

Do you recognize how important the Bible is? In Christianity, in its broadest sense, a Bible is very necessary. I do not care if you are Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Adventist, Episcopal, Orthodox or even Catholic. You can be Calvinist, Arminian, Semi-Pelagian, Conditionalist, Absolute Predestinarian, Modernist, Neo- Evangelical, Fundamentalist or whatever you call yourself. You’ll be hard pressed to practice your faith without a Bible! We take the Bible for granted in the west. There are many places in the world today where they do not. For instance, China, North Korea, Cuba, and the Muslim nations. There is still a need today.

I am willing to help anyone get a Bible, regardless of their religion or lack thereof. I saw too many people who I believe were genuine Christians, who did not have Bibles under communism. In many cases, perhaps most, how will people know the truth, if they have not the written word of God? Remember in Nehemiah’s day revival among the Jews came as God’s word was rediscovered and publicly read (please see Nehemiah chapter eight). Read and meditate on verse eight which says: “So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading”. Also: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (II Timothy 2:15). “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (II Timothy 3:16,17).

So, beloved, you can see how difficult it would be for a true Christian to function without the scriptures. Not impossible, but difficult. Haralan Popov and Simion Motz, who both served many years in harsh communist prisons, each personally told me how Christian prisoners had no Bibles, but shared the word from memory with one another when they could gather. There in prison, one page of the Bible was precious.

It may come to that here in America if the socialist God haters have their way. I think here a greater problem is a watering down of the true gospel through liberal and cultic preachers, and also continual re-translating and watering down of the pure word of God. That is a great danger. This is the reason I will not endorse just any translation of the Bible. In English now we have-- how many? So many it is ridiculous! Many of them are not sound, and are based on faulty theories, and faulty manuscripts. We do not have the original autographs. In the Providence of God, it is best we do not, for some liturgical types would likely worship the parchments themselves!

Call me old fashioned, obscurantist, whatever you will, but I believe the Masoretic text in the OT, and the majority text (received text = Textus Receptus), in the NT, is God’s settled word. In English, only the KJV, NKJV, Darby, and a handful of other translations are based on TR. The rest are Westcott and Hort variations. In English, I have seen nothing to surpass the KJV in spite of the Elizabethan language. Study it and you will be really richer for it. There are many study aids to help you grasp it. But, use whatever version you prefer, but I will stick with the old book ‘til Jesus comes or I go home!

The Russian Bible Society is a reliable distributor of Bibles in the languages of the former Soviet states. Their address is: Russian Bible Society, P.O. Box 6064, Asheville, NC 28816. Phone: (828) 681-0370- Dr. Bob Doom, Director. Email: revivallit@juno.com

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758)

 
Surely all of my readers have heard of Jonathan Edwards. He was a great man of God and likely the greatest  American theologian ever. God used him mightily, along with George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennant, and some other lesser known preachers, in the Great Awakening that took place in America in the 1700s. It was probably the greatest move of God ever in the United States. Some historians have said that the Great Awakening laid the foundation for the American Revolution. Perhaps so, but I do know that it started a revival fire that burned for many years in this land. Many lives were changed. 

At the time the Great Awakening began, Mr. Edwards was the pastor of a church in Northampton, MA  It was on July 7,1731 that he preached in Boston, The Public Lecture, which was later published as God Glorified—Man’s Dependence, which was his first public attack on Arminianism. The emphasis of the lecture was on God's absolute sovereignty in the work of salvation: that while it behooved God to create man pure and without sin, it was of his "good pleasure" and "mere and arbitrary grace" for him to grant any person the faith necessary to incline him or her toward holiness, and that God might deny this grace without any disparagement to any of his character. In 1733, a Christian revival began in Northampton and reached an intensity in the winter of 1734, and the following spring, that it threatened the business of the town. In six months, nearly 300 were admitted to the church. That message in Boston may well be the spark that started the Great Awakening. 

About 1735 there was a reaction against the revival. So many were touched by it, but not all repented. There were a few in such despair that they committed suicide. This caused the revival to cool; it is said, except in parts of Connecticut. However, despite these setbacks and the cooling of religious fervor, word of the Northampton revival and Edwards's leadership role had spread as far as England and Scotland. It was at this time that Edwards was acquainted with George Whitefield, who was traveling the Thirteen Colonies on a revival tour in 1739–40. The two men may not have seen eye to eye on every detail. Whitefield was far more comfortable with the strongly emotional elements of revival than Edwards was, but they were both passionate about preaching the Gospel. They worked together to orchestrate Whitefield's trip, first through Boston and then to Northampton. When Whitefield preached at Edwards's church in Northampton, he reminded them of the revival they had experienced just a few years before. This deeply touched Edwards, who wept throughout the entire service, and much of the congregation too was moved. 

Revival began to spring up again, and Edwards preached his most famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741. Though this sermon has been widely reprinted as an example of "Fire and Brimstone" preaching in the colonial revivals, this is not in keeping with Edward's actual preaching style. Edwards did not shout or speak loudly, but talked in a quiet, emotive voice. He moved his audience slowly from point to point, towards an inexorable conclusion: they were lost without the grace of God. While most 21st-century readers notice the damnation looming in such a sermon text, historian George Marsden reminds us that Edwards' was not preaching anything new or surprising: "Edwards could take for granted... that a New England audience knew well the Gospel remedy. The problem was getting them to seek it." That very well seems to be our major problem in this day; sinners taking seriously the Gospel. 

 Many were saved in that time through the ministries of these men. You can read the entire story in several books, including The Great Awakening by Joseph Tracy; Banner of Truth, London. That particular one is out of print, but you can buy a digital Kindle edition at Amazon for only $5.99.  

Now I want to share with you some of Edwards’ powerful words. Please read and reflect on them.  
As a voice from the past, God's mighty man raises His Standard high,
that God's Truth should not be lost in these
Last Days of deception.
"He being dead yet speaketh"
(Hebrews 11:4 ). 

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)  
God has laid himself under no obligation,
by any promise to keep any natural man
out of hell one moment.
God certainly has made no promises
either of eternal life,
or of any deliverance or preservation
from eternal death,
but what are contained in the covenant of grace,
the promises that are given in Christ,
in whom all the promises are yea and amen."

-fr   From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards   http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/54/        
           (To download PDF version) 
tp:        

TRUE GRACE
“Though true grace has various degrees, and there are some that are but babes in Christ, in whom the exercise of the inclination and will, towards divine and heavenly things, is comparatively weak; yet everyone that has the power of godliness in his heart, has his inclinations and heart exercised towards God and divine things, with such strength and vigor that these holy exercises do prevail in him above all carnal or natural affections, and are effectual to overcome them: for every true disciple of Christ "loves him above father or mother, wife and children, brethren and sisters, houses and lands: yea, than his own life."”
SPIRITUAL LIGHT
“Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from divine light shining into the soul. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world. This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior.”

     YOU MUST BE MADE NEW MEN

“They that are truly converted are new men, new creatures; new not only within, but without; they are sanctified throughout, in spirit, soul and body; old things are passed away, all things are become new; they have new hearts, and new eyes, new ears, new tongues, new hands, new feet…they walk in newness of life, and continue to do so to the end of life.”
Religious Affections, pp. 313-14

      GOD’S REVELATION

 “And yet some people actually imagine that the revelation in God’s Word is not enough to meet our needs. They think that God from time to time carries on an actual conversation with them,
chatting with them, satisfying their doubts, testifying to His love for them, promising them
support and blessings. As a result, their emotions soar; they are full of bubbling joy that is mixed with self-confidence and a high opinion of themselves. The foundation for these feelings, however, does not lie within the Bible itself, but instead rests on the sudden creations of their imaginations. These people are clearly deluded. God’s Word is for all of us and each of us; He does not need to give particular messages to particular people.”

      GOD’S MERCY FREE AND SOVEREIGN

     "It would be a great defect and not perfection in the sovereign and supreme Judge of the world

      to be merciful in such a sense that He could not bear to have penal justice executed. The

      Scriptures everywhere represent the mercy of God as free and sovereign, not that the exercises

      of it are necessary so that God cannot bear that justice should take place" 

      GOD IS THE HIGHEST GOOD

“God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.”
CHARITY
 "All the fruits of the Spirit which we are to lay weight upon as evidential of grace, are summed
up in charity, or Christian love; because this is the sum of all grace. And the only way, therefore,
in which any can know their good estate, is by discerning the exercises of this divine charity in
their hearts; for without charity, let men have what gifts you please, they are nothing."
A TRULY HUMBLE MAN
"A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him."
Published by Charles Woodruff- email: oursong2000@yahoo.com